Brother Lawrence: Session 2

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 the Trustworthy Guidance, found in the Practicing the Presence by Brother Lawrence. And in this session, we'll be turning to the section of Practicing the Presence of its Collected Letters. And we'll be focusing on the 12th letter. And the 12th letter is significant, I think, for two reasons. One is, and as Carmen points us out in her commentary, she points us out, it's written at the end of his life, he's dying, he knows that he's dying. I think this is significant because, you know, with these mystic teachers, as they get to the end of their life before the light dims and they cross over, they become even more transparent or more luminous. So for example, when we were looking at Treats of Aval of the Interior Castle, it was written toward the end of her life. And St. John of the Cross, these two Carmelites, this cow is Carmelites in the order that Brother Lawrence belonged to. As he goes through his writings of St. John of the Cross, in the living flame of love. And so I think we have this feeling of effulgence or fullness here in this 12th letter of Brother Lawrence. The second reason I think this is significant is that in this letter, he's writing to a nun, a prioress. He is responding to her request in which he's asking him to share, how did you get this way, Brother Lawrence? So he begins, since you insist, I will share with you the method I've used to arrive at the state of awareness of God's presence. I think this is also significant. And I think it goes like this.

She's saying, in effect, you know, Brother Lawrence, when I'm in your presence or I listen to your teachings, it's very clear that God has achieved in you a kind of very profound state of God's oneness with you as your very life. And I'd really like if you'd let me in on how did you do this? How did this happen? And the reason I want to know is the hope that by listening to you, God might achieve in me what God has achieved in you. And I think that's how the lineage is handed on, really. We sense a certain fullness of presence. And we sit in the presence of that person in whom the fullness of the presence of God is experienced. So that by being in their presence and by listening to them, it might arc over. And in a sense, he's also telling her, you know, the very sincerity in which you want to know this is itself the way that I got here. That it's in the sincerity with which we're listening to these teachings and were moved and were touched by them. That is the path. We're all on the path right now that he was on, following this way, how the lineages carried on from heart to heart. Ethan says to her, since you insist, I will share with you the method I have used to arrive at the state of awareness of God's Presence, where the mercy of our friend has kindly put me. I'd like to reflect on this. The friend is God. So Jesus on the cross says greater love than this has no one, that he lays down his life for his friends. They were God's friends. And he's saying, I came to this place not because of something I did to get here. I got to this place because the friend put me here. It's true, I had with God's grace to cooperate with that. But I'm always cooperating with what the friend was achieving and has achieved in me. And I think there's a lesson here for us, really. See, insofar as you listen to these teachings, insofar as you're moved by them, as intimately relevant to your own longing.

How has it come to pass that you have come to this sensitivity with which you're capable of this intimate attentiveness? And it's true, you had to cooperate with it. It cooperated with it by listening now. But it's also true, it was achieved in you by the friend. See, it was given. It was given. And likewise, all the deepening intimacies that lie ahead are intimates that are always given. So it's important to know that it's, and that's why it has a quality of gratitude or amazement about it, about what this friend, this infinite love is achieving in us, in our heart. In the simplicity of our sincerity, he goes on, I cannot conceal from you how reluctantly I have been won over by your request. That is that you tell me how I got here or how the friend brought me here. My condition in responding to it is that you do not show my letter to anyone. If I thought you would let anyone see it, even all my goodwill for your spiritual investment could not compel me to write it. I think this is significant, too. You know, I think there are certain things in the depths of ourselves that aren't for the telling. They're not. They're innermost. But then, in the presence of a certain person, things not for the telling, we know by love that it's meant to be told. And he trusts her. But you gotta promise. So you have to promise you won't tell anybody. Now, what I think is also interesting, I think we have to assume, I guess, that she didn't tell anybody. She died, not a word. But years later, when someone found this manuscript, and they read that he didn't want her to tell anybody, they decided to tell all of us the words out. So here we are, years later, we're all in on what he didn't even want her to say. And we're grateful for it, we're grateful for it. And I think there's something about it that is kind of a providential ways in which these teachings kind of come forward and come out into the world. And we're all benefiting from it now. But also, I would suggest this too, that as we listen to it, there's something about the quickening of the stirrings in us that aren't for the telling. It's innermost this way, and that we reverence the interior depth and intimacy of it within our hearts. But also know that the time may come in the presence of a certain person that you say it. Like I'm saying it now, we're doing it now. And so I think we always trust this sense of love's directives and what to share and not to share, and so on. So here is what I can tell you about it. In other words, here is what I can tell you about it, because there's layers I can't tell you about because they're not sayable. They're not communicable. But here is what I can share in it. In several books, I found different methods of going to God and various practices of the spiritual life. And these would, I believed, only clutter my mind rather than make it easier to find what I wanted. I had to reflect on this, too, with you. And then as you can listen to spiritual talks, and there could be people who started listening to these talks, it wasn't for them. Good for them. Go where you need to go to find what you need to find. But you can kind of know that you pick up a certain book or certain teaching and it doesn't touch you where you're at. Trust yourself. Don't get caught up and preoccupied with tangential things this way. I think that's very good. And there's something else about this, too. I think these teachings for the place where Brother Lawrence is coming from is so close to Jesus, to the Gospels. You know, it says in the Gospels, the disciples asked Jesus, what is the greatest commandment? This is in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 22 See, what is the greatest commandment? That is, out of all these beautiful things that you say about God's love for us and God's oneness with us, and the mercy of God, and so on. What is the one thing that if we would ground ourselves in that, everything else would fall into place? That's a great question, that's the teacher. And what's fascinating is what Jesus says. He doesn't say anything we're supposed to believe, or anything we're supposed to get over, or get behind us, or get over, whatever. He says the greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. That's the greatest commandment. And the second is like to it, to love your neighbor as yourself, because we're all siblings of infinite love. So then we listen to what Jesus says, and it's kind of like listening to Brother Lawrence in a way. See, to love God, love you God with all my heart, but Lord, I don't know what all my heart is. But you do, because you created it. So I'm asking you to reveal to me what all of my heart is, which is the totality of your heart given to me, and love is the reality of my heart. I want you to help me with this. And I don't know what all my soul is, the vibrancy of my life presence, but you do. You do because you created it. And giving yourself to me is a vibrancy and intimacy of my identity, my deepest soul. And all my mind, I don't know what all my mind is, but I really do. I really do. To let us have within us, St. Paul says, the mind that was in Christ Jesus. And the mind that is in Christ Jesus is God's mind. The logos, the word given to us by God is the depth of our own mind, is Christ's mind. And so you see this kind of abyss, like depth to the teachings of what he's saying here. And by the way, all these other books that were, maybe are tangential for you, or maybe someone else meets them right where they are. And I think this often happens. Sometimes we'll pick up a spiritual book. We don't know what to make of it. Pick up the same book five years later, we just fall right over. There's a certain timeliness where the word that's being spoken, or really maybe the tonal quality, or the depth from which the words are coming, are lined up and in resonance with where we're at. And you can tell when it's happening because it makes the soul sing. That is something in us resonates and leans into it. Like this is giving us, giving a voice to our own longings of our own heart, which is an echo of God's longings for us. What I was seeking was nothing other than a way of being completely with God. So how distilled he is, like what's happening? That's right. And here's my sentence. This is why I share with you what it means to me. But I'm also saying the light of what he knew too, it's St. John of the Cross and Teresa and the other mystics, like tease this out in the light of the lineage. What I was seeking was nothing other than a way of being completely with God. What's that mean? How can we understand it? What I was seeking was a way of being completely with God, because in you, as you listen to these words, there is a place within you that's seeking with nothing other than a way to be completely one with God. And that deep place in you that wants nothing other to be completely one with God has been placed in you by God is the mystery of who you are as a person created by God and the image and likeness of God. When St. Augustine says, You made our hearts for thee, O Lord, and our hearts are restless, so they rest in thee. We have seen to it, we're grateful for all of your gifts, your consolations, your insights, your guidance, but I'm not content with your gifts. I'm not content with anything less than you, because I also know you created me in such a way that you're not content with anything less than me. And so it's a kind of a falling away to come to a kind of a quiet sincerity or a certain depth. And insofar, if we're in realms now that can't be explained, but there's realms with which we're intimately resonant. Like somehow we know this, and it's helping us to put words to this depth. And by the way, I would also say as we listen to this, see, there's that in us once, nothing less than to become other than being completely with God, God being completely with us. And there's also that in us, it's somewhat estranged from that. That is, it touches us, we taste in it a longing, but we also taste in the longing of something that we still haven't found our way to abide in that oneness. And that awareness that we haven't yet abide but we long to, that's the path that we're on. See, that is the path.