Topics 16 -17: Pattern of the Journey and The Essential and Continuing Practices
I. The spiritual life
A) There is a known pattern with a set sequence. There is nothing magical about the number four (Four Gospels).
B) The sequence is progressive (in order and does not skip steps), and ever-recurring. Cyclical. Spiritual life is a known pattern and ever-recurring, not linear.
C) Knowing the sequence gives a sense of rhythm, order and helps calm our hearts, especially when on the second path in chaos.
D) The pattern holds an explicit map that helps us locate the appropriate question and practices on the spiritual life.
E) The sequence teaches the process of how to love, reconcile and be in gratitude. Too often we think in terms of product –not way to live.
F) Love is not a thing, but a way of living, specifically the way we face change, move through suffering, receive joy and mature in service. Not momentary results
II. Eight essential and continuing practices
A) 1st Practice: Speak Truth in Unity
On the third spiritual path we have an epiphany of oneness. On the fourth path we need to build skill in how to speak truth from that interior sense of oneness.
Find new ways to talk with each other.
How can we put the conversation of our differences in a place where we can truly hear what each other is deeply desiring and from that place find commonality
B) 2nd Practice: Open and Engage the Truths of Beauty
Beauty has a remarkable effect. It has the power to connect us to a sense of awe and wonder, and a knowing that there is something beyond that we call God, Spirit, higher power etc.
Three forms of engaging beauty:
(a) Appreciative: hearing, viewing, touching, tasting, smelling
(b) Collaborative: appreciative shared with another: i.e. time in nature, making music together, dancing, sports
(c) Creative: pen, brush, musical instrument, etc. – to sit figuratively or metaphorically before a blank canvas and engage the creative process
Creative processes usher us into a direct experience of the four paths: begin (change), wait (trial/suffer), something comes (receive joy), gradually meaning arises and further action (maturing in service).
Repeatedly engaging the creative process, trust grows that ―something‖ leads us and that something has a pattern that we follow.
C) 3rd Practice: Find the Quiet Center
1) Tradition gives us two ways/practices to the quiet center:
(a) Quiet-Silent Meditation (or Apophatic meaning ―to say no) are practices of self- emptying.
Its underlying principle is that God is beyond all earthly symbols and human efforts at understanding; therefore, a mediator should attempt to transcend or remove all concepts and "empty oneself." When an image or thought arises, it is to be gently dismissed. The mediator’s continuing effort is toward achieving a completely serene, yet connected, awareness of the whole, of God.
Apophatic meditation can be an active form of prayer employing a mantra and breathing, or it can be a silent contemplation such as that used in centering prayer, most notably espoused by Father Thomas Keating. This prayer is typically practiced as twenty to thirty minutes or more of quiet sitting.
(b) Active Meditation (or Kataphatic meaning ―down into an utterance) are practices of engaging or going down into an image.. Examples: Lectio Divina, Sacred Chanting, Soul Collage, Icon writing, Labyrinth or walking meditation. Kataphatic worship affirms the knowledge of God, using expressions of wonder and glory. Its meditation form usually focuses on an image, although it can also use words or a story or even music. The practice is to focus on the image, move into it, then through it, and eventually find stillness.
Repeatedly finding the Quiet Center helps us touch Mary‘s sense of equanimity with God‘s timing rather than our own.
D) 4th Practice: Absorb the Deeper Rhythm
(1) Live the 24-hour cycle with consciousness:
(a) 1st Path/Matthew: just past sunset to night hours – dark sky not end point but beginning. Sunset between old and new day
(b) 2nd Path/Mark: night hours to first light .Long night hours. Great anxiety.
(c) 3rd Path/John: first light to mid-morning . Dawn. Not beginning but comes out darkness.
(d) 4th Path/Luke: mid morning to sunset
Live through 24 hour cycle – 1st – think to day end and day coming.
(2) Live the four-season cycle with consciousness:
(a) 1st Path/Matthew
(b) 2nd Path/Mark: Winter/withering
(c) 3rd Path/John: Spring/blooming but also comes danger – rain, flooding. Gift with challenge.
(d) 4th Path/Luke: Summer/maturing
(e) As we absorb the pattern and its deeper rhythm, we come to know that the progressive sequence of the Spiritual Life is a given. We do not create it. We are invited to consciously follow it and live it. There is a pattern that orders all growth in nature and within each of us. Christianity given us a door way to walk into spiritual life through the Gospels.
(E) 5th Practice: Expand into Risk
Consciously living the Spiritual Life teaches us that some risk is a necessity. Life with God has moments of being in safe harbor. More usually, the spiritual life is an adventure with God filled with change, uncertainty, trial, error and the rich bounty of learning that God is with us, always.
(F) 6th Practice: Learn to Let Go
1)There is a vast cycle that is moving us if we will but participate. We are not in charge. Knowing the cycle, we know that there is a second path filled with an experience of chaos. Chaos is part of the Spiritual Life.
2) Practice receiving the chaos of the second path as spiritual gift.
(G) 7th Practice: Build the New Jeru-Shalom
Build communities that understand that there is a harmony deep within diversity.
(H) 8th Practice: Make the Great Leap of Trust
Trust is the first promise and final fruit of the spiritual life. And the third spiritual path repeatedly teaches that we are accompanied. None of us is ever alone . This practice asks us to walk knowing we are ―accompanied, especially when we sense betrayal and mistrust.
Topic 18: Universal Pattern (Almost): The Journey of Quadratos
Quadratos makes the assumption that the four gospels were initially selected because they held a pattern incorporating wisdom already known to be powerful—and therefore certain to move a great and glorious new faith forward. The more common view—that the gospels were four separate stories of Jesus’s life and teachings—seems unlikely to accomplish this purpose as successfully.
We have an approach that provides a more logical and satisfying answer to the struggles of our heads. It is this new and more fulfilling paradigm—the paradigm of quadratos; It is the story of Jesus the Christ, who lives eternally within time.
Quadratos also provides a base for spiritual renewal on a larger scale, because it moves Christianity away from its current focus on dogma and historicity into practice. Unlike many biblical historians, we see no sense in using only the narrow strictures of historical and theological documents that have so often been abridged and edited for political, abusive, and self-serving purposes. We have demonstrated to you that quadratos is based solidly on spiritual, psychological, anthropological, and sociological patterns that have shown us their faces over time.
The approach provided by quadratos refreshes those eternal words of inspiration and returns them to their original role as agents of transformation . Nothing on earth is needed more today than transformation
We are growing up as a species, but so far most of our progress has been focused on the externals—on science and technology—through using our intellectual skills. By comparison with the strides in the technological world, our psychological and spiritual progress has lagged far behind. Each day, we experience constant unexpected intimacies, intrusions, demands, and confusions, without any real guidance or inner wisdom
I. We may be observing a universal cycle that is present in Christianity’s greatest traditions.
A) This sequence or pattern is not linear or lock step.
1) Aspects of our life are likely to be in differing paths at the same moment. Our relationship with a spouse may be in one path. Our work life in another. Our prayer life in yet another. But as we observe each particular aspect of our lives, we will note how it moves through the pattern without skipping steps.
B) Patterns seem to be the great work of Spirit, moving us.
1) We may observe patterns in the large sweep of history. As an example, in large frame today appears as the second spiritual path with its intense sense of conflict and despair in the face of seemingly overwhelming catastrophes. But if this era is the second path, we who walk the spiritual life know that at some point this path will turn to the third, and then to the fourth. Wait patiently
II. The Pattern in The Liturgical Church Year
A) Advent and Christmas: 1st Path Inaugurate New spiritual path in us.
B) Epiphany through Lent: 2nd Path Deep interior scrutinize
C) Easter through Pentecost: 3rd Path New epiphany
D) Ordinary Time/Sundays after Pentecost: 4th Path
III The Pattern in The Three-Year Sunday Lectionary Cycle (both RM and RCL)
A) Year A: Matthew/1st Path and the spiritual teachings on facing change
B) Year B: Mark/2nd Path and the spiritual teachings on moving through suffering
C) Year C: Luke/4th Path and the spiritual teachings on maturing in service
D) Lent & Easter (every year): John/3rd Path and the annual community retreat and celebration of our union as The Body of Christ and how broken faith with it . Reflect mystery of joy and union. 2nd and 3rd century – diversity in thought grew in Christian community, Roman tyranny. Intent give Church annual retreat – come back forgiveness before God – not understood full message of God or practiced it. Increased 9 days to 100 days
E) Ash Wednesday to Pentecost is roughly one hundred days covering fourteen Sundays, forming the annual community retreat and celebration. Summit in Pentecost – now stand with new fire in our midst. Carry out to 6 months of mission moved back around wheel.
F) In the restoration of the three-year Sunday lectionary, there is a new reality that we as Church are just beginning to grasp. No longer do we have just one church year organized around a telling of Jesus‘ life and teachings. Now we have three church years organized around that year‘s Gospel and its teachings on the spiritual life of Jesus within us.
IV. The Pattern in Eucharist/Mass and Sunday Worship
A) Gathering Rite: come together to be transformed/grow – First Path
B) Liturgy of the Word: scripture challenges us to an examination – Second Path . Wrestle with the word.
C) Liturgy of the Table: receiving the Body of Christ – Third Path
D) Dismissal (missa means ‘to be sent’): sent to serve – Fourth Path
V. Conclusion
A) There is a pattern moving and sweeping across us. In the Four-Gospel Journey and many great structures of Christendom, we have been given a tremendous guide to aid us in walking the spiritual life.
B) Final Words from The Hidden Power of the Gospels, p. 349- 350.
“We hope that, by now, we have persuaded you that your life will be improved by the Journey of Quadratos. And perhaps that is reason enough for you to thoroughly study and engage in its practices. But we would like to present you with another motive. This one is both critical and timeless. It has been around for a couple of millennia now, and it has not changed. It has to do with our greater purpose—that mysterious part of us that we all refer to, search for, but never quite seem to find. We too often end up settling for putting its responsibility on our children, donating money to causes in return for plaques with our names inscribed on them, or making myriad other futile efforts. Each of these is an attempt to make us feel as though we are somehow increasing the impact of our small humanity on the earth and decreasing the force of our inevitable physical death. But is that what our greater purpose is truly about?
“Our answer is both yes and no. Two millennia ago, Jesus the Christ taught through his words and life that much of what the world accepts is only illusion. Among the truths he gave us were the understandings that all are One and there is no death. He also gave us the solemn charge to humbly share the experience of our transformation and the example of our lives with others, so that eventually the entire world might be freed of illusion and become one with God.
“Therefore, yes—through sharing, we do expand our small humanity, and toward that end, our work takes many forms. It tells stories, dances, and paints paintings. It shepherds groups, both small and large, in worship and in song. It brings matter and spirit together and helps to guard the health
“But no, we do not work to decrease the impact of our physical death. Not at all. Time and death are of little or no concern. We know with certainty that life is eternal and God’s time is the only one worth marking. We have our greater purpose and it is very clear. We are focused on the noble work with which Christians were charged two thousand years ago, and it hasn’t changed: follow the journey, understand and know God, follow the journey, grow and live with God, follow the journey, pass it on and serve God—and do this with the utter devotion of our heart and soul and mind. So that All may be One.
[Jesus prayed to the Father,] "I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me, I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me." (John 17:20-23)