Contemplation and Action

The last week or so, I've been casting around for another subject, partly because the previous entry was a bit of an act to follow. While I'm grateful that it was received so well, it was a bit of an exhausting entry, so it's taken a couple false starts to settle on a new entry.

What I decided to write about is something else which represents a change for my spiritual life in the last ten or so years- the interlocked combination of contemplation and action. That will, inevitably, strike some of my readers as a contradiction in terms. 'How could sitting and thinking about God be compatible with getting out and doing things? Isn't contemplation just another word for navel-gazing? Get up and do something useful!'

At the root of that objection is an assumption that contemplation and action are mutually exclusive- that one can't do one and the other. Yet, I think that is mistaken. After all, when Jesus was asked what was the greatest commandment in the Law, he answered :   

                                “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all

                                  your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the first
                                  and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it:
                                  ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b] 40 All the Law and the
                                  Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22, 36-40)

You see what Jesus did here. In answer to the question about the greatest (i.e. one, greatest) commandment, he gave two. One, "Love the Lord your God..." calls forth the contemplation of God with all our faculties- emotionally, spiritually, intellectually. Two, he calls us to "Love your neighbour as yourself"which calls one out and into action. That is, he calls us inward into contemplation of God, but, then, outward to our neighbour which involves action. Then, He anchors it with the last statement which makes "All the Law and Prophets hang on these two commandments". That is, all that God has taught us in the Bible hangs on the love of God and love of neighbour. Just as the two cannot be separated, so contemplation and action can't be separated.

You can see that combination in the lives of so many heroes of the faith in our and previous generations. Thomas Merton combined a commitment to monastic contemplation with a burning desire for peace-making. Henri Nouwen felt the pull to contemplative prayer, but also remained committed to serving his neighbour in his spiritual writings, but, perhaps, more importantly, in his work at L'Arche in the last years of his life. Nor are Christians the only ones who do this. Gandhi had a rigorous ascetical prayer life amid all his efforts to serve his people. I could go on, but you get the picture. All of these figures found that a vigourous prayer life was necessarily for them to do the good that they did in the world. And, conversely, the actions they did in the world were essential for their understanding of what God was asking them to do in their prayer lives. Contemplation and action didn't just co-exist for them. They complemented each other.


Here is the point where I have to admit that my attention-span for contemplative prayer would fill a tea-spoon. I can manage about ten minutes, maybe, fifteen, in prayer before my thoughts spin completely out of control. And that is on a good day. Of course, I know that is common and that it is part of the process of learning contemplative prayer. The desert monastics in the 4th century talk about warring against the logismoi- the chains of obsessional thinking which get in the way of our prayer to God- as a necessary element to getting to contemplation. My difficulties with concentration just mark me as a beginner and I can live with that.


Yet, even in the modest nature of my prayer-life, I have seen that link between contemplation and action enrich how I do things. Compassion and openness to others comes easier when I pray. Listening to God, even a little bit, makes it easier to listen to people. And it is listening and compassion which allow me to build community in both my classes and extra-curricular clubs- communities were students can feel safe enough to risk, whether that risk in intellectual or mental or emotional. Listening also helps me hear the pain and experience of others and impels me to action to find a space for that too in my teaching. When prayer (contempation) and action coincide, good things happen.

Of course, the opposite is true for me. All too often, I lose track of prayer in the course of the day. Fear, resentment, selfishness drive me in ways that I'd prefer not to admit. I make mistakes. I fail to listen. I lose my temper. But, as a desert monastic story goes, when asked what people did in that monastery, an elder said that they fell, and got up, fell and got up, fell and got up". Perhaps it is in my failures that growth comes, usually in the form of remembering to pray. And it is that prayer that leads me to find a way to make amends.

I am, as I say, a beginner and, as a result, I make the mistakes of a beginner. I don't understand everything about contemplation. I doubt if anyone really does. That might be the point- getting to know God is a lifelong endeavor which really doesn't end in our life times (or, at least, shouldn't). But that contemplation, that prayer, doesn't stop when I say 'Amen' and head out to the rest of my life. That prayer should be part of the process of becoming the person that God has made me and, then, translating that into what work God has for me today. And it is that work which leads me back to contemplating who sent me. so I can learn better what I need to do. It all interelates. It is all connected.

Change of Heart

Over the last few weeks, I've been looking over my earliest entries on this blog. There is a lot of fodder for reflection, but,  today, I've decided that it is time to return to a theme which dominated the first few months of this blog- the issue of same-sex blessings/marriage. I admit that I'm nervous about returning to this subject because I know how much heat and how little light has emerged out of these debates. That was part of the reason why, in October of 2006, I shifted the focus of this blog from Anglican world polemics on THE issue to a more sedate focus on patristics (Enough With Schism).  I was conscious that the angry adrenaline of this debate was doing me no good spiritually, so I needed to take a break. That break proved one of the best spiritual decisions I could make because it has opened up the space for me to pray and to listen more on this issue, as well as in so many other parts of my life. It is that praying and listening which have helped me, over the last thirteen years, to deepen my faith and commitment to living a Christian life everyday. It has also caused me, almost as a side-effect, to reconsider my position on same-sex marriage, and to affirm the faith and committed relationships of my LGBTQ brothers and sisters.

To understand how big a shift that last sentence is, I have to explain where I was in 2006. In 2006, I was a moderate conservative, pretty convinced by the standard Biblical arguments (Genesis 1:27, Genesis 19, Leviticus 18:22, Deuteronomy 23:17-18, Romans 1:26-27; 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10) and upset at what I saw as the hasty and disorderly actions of the Episcopal Church in the US and the Diocese of New Westminster in conducting same-sex blessings when substantial parts of the Anglican Communion were opposed to them. By 2006, my wife and I were still in some doubt about whether we could stay in a church which was moving this way. However, we were held back by a strong commitment to the unity of the church and did not want to break into a schism which we felt could not fail to be a product of sinful refusal of both sides to work out our disagreements in a Christian spirit. At the very least, we felt we needed to earn our way out - to talk about our disagreement and see if there remained space for us in the Anglican Church of Canada. As it turned out, there was, and that space was in our parish church, which gave us the space to work out our issues and concerns without being judged. I'm deeply grateful for that space because it gave us a chance to sit with our concerns instead of storming out in anger.

What is most striking to me about those entries on same-sex blessings  in 2006 is just how little I was talking about the actual issue itself - whether homosexuality was sinful or not. Now, don't me wrong, I thought that and had my share of arguments about that view with people on various Internet chat boards. On the blog, however, my main concern was the damage to the unity of the church caused by both liberal (largely unilateral) initiatives to support same-sex blessings and conservative (definitely unilateral) decisions to create an alternative Anglican denomination. In fact, in the first few months, I was pretty exercised about both of those issues and was committed to what I had thought would be a good solution - the ill-fated Windsor Report. If only the extremists on both sides would listen....

Yet, what strikes me now about these posts is that, while they were not necessarily wrong, at least, about the ecclesiological issues, they were incomplete. That is, I was focused on how conservatives like me can stay, but it just wasn't on my radar that the same questions were being asked by LGBTQ Anglicans. I entirely missed the other side of the story - a story characterized by rejection and condemnation by the church that they also love. While I was sure I was right about homosexuality, LGBTQ Anglicans were, at best, deluded, so I could (and did) dismiss their stories and stick to the abstract principles that I felt I needed to defend. Never mind that many of those stories, when I encountered them, very often revealed a truly vibrant faith. There was the faith of a conversation partner on a Internet bulletin board, whose partner was nursing him through a chronic illness with the same kind of love and grace that one would expect to see in the most self-sacrificing marriage. That made me uncomfortable with my abstractions. And rightly so.

The turning point for me happened back in 2012, when I was having a discussion with a former student on Facebook (via private message) about the Christian view on homosexuality. We talked about the standard passages (see above) and the attitudes of the Anglican and United Churches on how to interpret them. As we ended the conversation, I was reflecting on how difficult it was to discuss these issues and threw out this comment:  "What I've learned is that I am averse to treating people as abstractions, that the very real pain of gay people means I can't treat this issue as a theological debating point". I remember that I surprised myself with this comment, possibly because it was a codification of much of the discomfort I was already feeling about this issue. I had, I realized, spoken more wisely that I actually knew. So, that comment of mine stuck with me and became a bit of a mantra, as I reminded myself that I had just made a commitment not to treat gay people as theological abstractions. And what that meant was I needed to listen more to the experiences of LGBTQ Christians, not in order to prepare a rebuttal, but with an ear for empathy and the grace notes of their faith. It is in that listening that allowed me to ask the question whether their faith is any different from mine, and, if it isn't, why were they being rejected?

So, what about the Bible? That was my biggest obstacle because those standard passages are in there and, if I was to take the Bible seriously, I really needed to consider them carefully. I know, in my conservative days, I was most convinced by the New Testament passages. In fact, back in grad school, I had made a word study on the key words, especially arsenokoites and malakoi. What I said at the time was that their meaning was pretty clear, but what I didn't admit to was some discomfort about how decisive I was saying these words were. The fact is that I confess that conviction wasn't as definite as I let on. Paul is remarkably coy in his terminology in these passages. Both of those words seem to be euphemisms and, like many euphemisms, are deliberately imprecise (believe me, if Paul wanted to be clear, there was Greek vocabulary for it). It is clear they are talking about sexuality and, likely, about some aspect of same-sex behavior. What wasn't clear was whether he could even conceive of the kind of monogamous, self-sacrificing relationships that advocates of same-sex marriage argue for. Instead, it is more likely that he was reacting to other practices such as temple prostitution or pederasty; both of which I think would cause most people, Christians or not, legitimate concern.

I'm conscious of the irony that I would have dismissed this kind of argument in my conservative days as an attempt to re-write the Bible. Yet, I would defend it by pointing out that we use historical criticism all the time, on controversial topics or not-so controversial topics. I doubt if this argument will convince anyone truly committed to a conservative view, but it fits what I understand about the history and the language of these passages.

If I am right about how to interpret these passages, then, what Paul is condemning is different from what we are seeing in same-sex marriages. If that is true, we have to ask entirely different questions. Do these relationships allow for the kind of self-giving love and commitment that we expect in Christian marriage? Can we see these relationships as a reflection of divine love through the everyday living out of this commitment? I think the answers to those questions are yes, we can. Or are these relationships, in fact, any different from their heterosexual counterparts? I think the answer here is, no, I don't think they are. And, if that is true, I really can't see how we can, in any justice, stand in the way of blessing these relationships in the same way that mine was blessed just over eighteen years ago.

I wish that I could stop here, pat myself on the back for being more affirming and press the publish button, but I don't think I can. I can't because I can't forget how much I wrote on the subject in multiple Internet venues as well as sometimes even in conversations and how easy it was for my words to wound, even when I was trying to be irenic. How easy it has been to be a part of the rejections that my LGBTQ brothers and sisters have suffered over the years. I have seen the effect of that rejection, as a teacher, in the lives of my students, even seeing a student forced to move out their house for being trans. Or hearing a brilliant former student fearing the reaction of their religious parents for coming out. I have seen it as a person of faith, who have seen LGBTQ Christians - lay people, priests, even bishops - rejected, not for the quality of their faith, but for how they express their sexuality. Yet, their faith remains tenacious and firm. I am in awe of that faith, but I am conscious of being a part of that rejection. If there can be any amends for my role in all that, I hope this entry can be a beginning.

I am writing this reflection at a crucial time for the Anglican Church of Canada. In around two weeks, the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada will meet in Vancouver to discuss national issues. A prominent vote will be this one in the form of the final acceptance of changes to the marriage canons which would permit same-sex marriages. I am neither a bishop nor a priest nor even a lay delegate to the General Synod. I am merely a lay person, who has thought about these issues, considered them, sometimes agonized over them, and has come to a different understanding of them from when I started. I offer these reflections for whatever they are worth, hopeful that they may offer a way forward, modest though it is, what feels very much to be a intractable deadlock.