Brother Lawrence: Session 1

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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James Finley (0:09)

Greetings, I'm Jim Finley. Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.

Greetings, everyone, and welcome to our time together, Turning for Trustworthy Guidance, found in the teachings of the Christian mystic, Brother Lawrence, in his treasured book, Practicing the Presence of God. Carmen Acevedo Butcher translates this classic work and titles it Practice of the Presence. And in these reflections, I'll be using her translation and also being very much helped by her in-depth insights into the work. So with that then, I want to begin at the very beginning of the book, which are the maxims, the sayings. These weren't found till later. So in the older translations, the one I had at the monastery, it didn't include the maxims. So this is more of a complete version of the work. And I want to start with the spiritual maxims, and I want to start with the very first one, which is everything is possible. And this is on page 46 I'll read the passage and then comment on it, reflect upon it. Everything is possible for those who believe. Even more for those who hope. Still more for those who love. And most of all, for all those who practice and persevere in these three powerful paths. I'd like to reflect on this. And I'd like to observe something about Brother Lawrence and how he teaches. As we look at the other mystics that we've been exploring together in this series, say for example, Discounts, Carmelite, Lay Brother. And so Discounts, Carmelite, Saint Priest and Saint John of the Cross. They give us spiritual teaching. And then they would expand upon it with examples of how it expresses it in different ways, how to relate to that, the challenges that Brother Lawrence doesn't do that. It's almost like a very succinct poetic voice in a single phrase, but he doesn't comment on the phrase. And so what it means in some way is poetic and dense with endless implications. And I also think that if we haven't been thinking when I was with Thomas Merton at the monastery, I think if we would be going to Brother Lawrence as our spiritual director, like Father Joseph will see later, this priest, he wouldn't talk like this. He wouldn't talk in succinct aphorisms. I think you'd get the sense he'd be very present, and he'd be very present to you. He'd be deeply attentive to you. And he would listen to what it is you want help with, and he would join you in your search. And so I'm going to take that role here, and I'm going to share with you how it sits with me personally, because that's what counts. Not just my opinion. What I want to do is I want to share how it strikes me personally too to the lineage of the mystical traditions of the Christian faith that I was steeped in at the monastery and all these mystics. So we're making explicit by practical examples what he leaves implicit. And hopefully as you're listening to these talks, it will help you then to see how this sits with you, because this is what he would want. It's challenging, not because it's technical, but it's disarmingly transparent. It's our actual presence. With that said then, I'll begin that everything is possible for those who believe. So I'd like to tease open what it means to believe. I think in the light of the mystical tradition, certainly in the light of Brother Lawrence, is to believe with our heart that God believes in us. And to trust that God's one with us. And that we're seeking with God's help to foster the sincere desire to be ever more surrendered over in the trusting faith in God's faith in us, giving the infinity of God's very presence to us as God's beloved. And that's to believe. So it isn't then right at the very beginning, but we're trying to believe better, or we're trying to improve our believing skills. But rather what we're doing with God's help is to be surrendered and open to God's faith in us, and kind of a devotional sincerity. It's the realization of the presence of God realized in devotional sincerity, and this is to believe. Next, even more to hope. And so for us, we saw this to previous Mystics too. See, for us to hope in time is we hope for a hopeful outcome of a current process we're in the midst of, that we hope it turns out the way we want it to, the way we hope that it will. But with God, we don't hope that God loves us, and we don't hope that God's present in our life because God is already present in our life. So, the hope is to know that since God is already in love with us, and is already one with us, and if so, in this sense, this is also very key to Brother Lawrence, to all these mystics. God is one with us, I'll say it poetically, God is one with us in that the infinite presence of God is presencing the infinity of itself, like a self-donating act, creative act, that the infinite presence of God is presencing the infinity of itself and giving itself away whole and complete in and as the gift and the miracle of the immediacy of our very presence, and the presence of others and of all things in our communal nothingness without God. So this is not to say that we are God, it's quite the opposite, is to say we're absolutely nothing without God, but this is the paradox. It's our absolute nothingness without God that makes our presence to be the presence of God. And so it's already here, already upon us. So there is the presence of God, and God is God. There is the presence of God presencing itself, pouring itself out and giving itself away in and as the immediacy of our very presence. But because of the mystery of the fall, not as a blight on the soul, but rather the fall in that our capacity to be experientially grounded in God's self-doning presence, presencing itself as our presence, is traumatized, kind of exiled from God's oneness with us that alone is ultimately real. And this is the importance of faith, to those who believe. Because faith, it isn't just in faith that when we hear that God loves us, to the power of the Spirit who dwells in our heart, we are empowered to experientially know that God really does love us. Not in a way that we could explain, because it's infinite, but we experientially understand that it's true, and that's the gift of faith. And there's another important thing for Brother Lawrence about faith and about hope, because now the hope is that with God's grace, we will be ever more experientially grounded in this love, without which we are nothing absolutely. And that's what we're hoping for. And there's another important theme in this for all the mystics, including Brother Lawrence. And that is it isn't just that there's faith, it's a kind of an intimate atmospheric knowing that God's oneness with us in life itself. But from time to time, we're graced with flashes of the experience of God's oneness with us. And some of the mystics tell us what their awakening experience was, and some they don't, but Brother Lawrence does. Another section of this book are the Conversations. So there was a young priest, Joseph of Beaufort, and at the time Brother Lawrence would have been in his 50s. So this young, newly ordained priest would go to Brother Lawrence as his spiritual director. It reminds me of 18 years old having Merton as my director. It was kind of like that. And then what Father Joseph would do, he would go right afterwards and carefully write down everything Brother Lawrence said. So what we have in the conversations is another access to Brother Lawrence's teachings. It's shared with us and Father Joseph's understanding of this. In one of these meetings that they had, he tells us about an awakening experience he had at 18 years old. I'll read the text. It's in the conversations. It's on page 123, the Strange Gift, the first conversation. Brother Lawrence told him this. One day in winter, as he was looking at a barren tree, stripped of its leaves, and considering how in a little while these leaves would reappear green, followed by flowers and fruits, he received a profound awareness of God's kindness and power that never left his soul since.