A Failed Contemplative
I come to contemplative writing as a failed contemplative. Hell, according to my beloved friend Suzanne, I don’t even pronounce it correctly (she wanted “con-TEMP-la-tive,’ while, unless I’m referring to a person, I generally use “con-tem-PLAY-tive.”)
My failure at contemplation isn’t for want of trying. I’ve done meditation going all the way back to the transcendental type in the ‘80s. Followed by mindfulness (including the Jainism version), centering prayer, sitting Zen (including at silent retreats), and a few yoga teachers who wanted us to be con-TEMP-la-tive while we bent and molded ourselves into evolved creatures.
I adored the Zen teacher and the Jainism practitioner, but, really, none of it took. My greatest failure was centering prayer. I went to a workshop at St. Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral in Memphis. What I mostly remember is I was supposed to use a candle and meditate on the flame. Then I joined a centering prayer group led by videos of Thomas Keating telling us what centering prayer meant. We listened, because Fr. Keating was one of those who created centering prayer. His theory had us emptying our thoughts and going into a small black room in our brains. Don’t hold me to that description. But like everything else I studied, the practice was 100% internal.
The traditions I studied cared deeply about how you arranged your body. Legs gently crossed, fingertips touching to hold in the Chi. Or back straight, feet flat on the floor—to this day when I hear, “Set your feet flat on the floor,” I respond, “Set your own stinking feet flat on the floor.”
A Turning Point in My Failed Journey
Then I remembered my writing teacher saying some of us need noise to write. She gave the example of her nephew who could’t sleep when a party was going on downstairs. So he descended the steps into the midst of the falderal and fell soundly asleep on the sofa. I don’t need noise for my writing, but I love coffee shop writing. Would that work for my contemplative practice?
I began going outside. I would sit and empty my mind of my thoughts while paying close attention to what was going on around me. The ambulance calling. The squirrel fleeing down the wire. The slightly-damp cushions. The smell of sweet olive, the boombox on the back of the bike, entertaining us all.
I let life wash over me, flow on by, while I sat in the middle of it. A three-dimensional world with me in the web. A tiny part, but a part. In that space, I immediately dropped into God. “Hello, God,” would rise into my brain. I was content. That was me accepting I had failed contemplation and doing it my way instead.
The Consequences of Being a Failed Contemplative
An aside: funny thing, unlike my failing Christianity, failing contemplation carries no danger. No one threatens you for not doing contemplation right. You community doesn’t rise up to shame you for failing contemplation. No one wants to stone you, even though Jesus literally actually said, “Don’t throw stones.” Sure, they may give you the side-eye, but your life isn’t at risk from sitting Zen wrong. Go figure.
Is It Really Failure?
For several years now, I’ve been going to offerings of the School for Contemplative Living. There, my Contemplative Justice Group read Cole Arthur Riley’s, This Here Flesh. She said the type of contemplation I was failing at wasn’t the only form of contemplation: “I am interested in reclaiming a contemplation that is not exclusive to whiteness, intellectualism, ableism, or mere hobby. And as a Black woman, I am disinterested in any call to spirituality that divorces my mind from my body, voice, or people.” This Here Flesh.
I spent twenty years practicing law. I believe I wore out my faith in intellectualism and the mind (my preoccupation with the brain is a different story.) Myriad ways exist to experience this world that have nothing to do with using the mind to clamp down on the mind. Defining the seat of God as the blank space in my mind isn’t for me. Let me release. Honor the physical. Rejoice in being part of the world.
Maybe the problem is I never actually understood contemplation. I don’t know. What I do know is that I love my contemplative practice, failed though it may be.
Prior: a failed Christian
Next: a failed writer
a failed contemplative, Cole Arthur riley, failing my contemplative practice, how I failed at contemplative prayer
Emma
Lord, I get it. I’ve practiced (and that is the appropriate word, as I have never mastered it) contemplative prayer for many years. And every time, my brain goes on these little journeys, the space in there being like a 7-layer Interstate highway. I have never been able to empty my mind and focus entirely on one thing – like a candle flame. Or even on the idea of God. My brain refuses. So long ago I decided – for me – that contemplative prayer will have to mean being STILL. So hard for me to do. And in a group of people, everyone else is trying so hard to do the same I know that no one else is paying any attention to me (or you), as they have their own struggles. I am happy that my brain, at my advanced age, still has the energy to drift off on those little journeys, while my body sits idly by. Feet may or may not be flat on the floor.
Ellen Morris Prewitt
“Feet may or may not be flat on the floor.” 🤣 My mind quiets but then I’m like, not sure what this has to do with God. I loved sitting Zen at a Millsaps continuing ed class under this popular Catholic priest. Then I dragged Tom to sit with that Catholic priest at the retreat center at Grand Cateau–upon arrival, I realized it was a silent retreat. That led to a published short story about a woman sitting Zen at a silent retreat, but I never sat Zen again on my own. I think your being still is surely a good practice.
Sybil MacBeth
I totally understand this, Ellen. Centering Prayer was torture for me. Why couldn’t my body be part of my prayer? That’s why prayingincolor color works for me. My body, eyes, hand…are invited into the “ contemplation.”
Ellen Morris Prewitt
Such a perfect analogy. And I think it’s kinder to our brains: give them a task so they can step aside and let the Spirit in.
Joanne Corey
I have been exposed to a number of different contemplative techniques but never could seem to follow them properly. I could never stop thinking.
I recently learned from reading brain science that there are a subset of people, including me, apparently, whose brains are wired for depth of thought, even when asleep. There isn’t a switch to turn off thought. Now, I don’t look at my inability to follow contemplative methods so much as failure but to let my mind do what it is meant to do – think.
Ellen Morris Prewitt
How very interesting! I do think as we learn more in brain science we will become more accepting of individualism and less “this is THE way to do it.” And good on you for honoring your thinking.