Turning to Brother Lawrence

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

You're listening to a podcast by the Center for Action and Contemplation. To learn more, visit cac.org.

James Finley (0:08)

Greetings, I'm Jim Finley.

Kirsten Oates (0:11)

And I'm Kirsten Oates.

James Finley (0:13)

Welcome to Turning to the Mystics.

Kirsten Oates (0:23)

Welcome, everyone, to season 12 of Turning to the Mystics. And I'm here with Jim, and I'm excited to announce that we'll be studying Practice of the Presence. And this is the work of Brother Lawrence. So the full title of the book we're going to be using is Nicholas Herman, Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, Practice of the Presence, a Revolutionary Translation by Carmen Acevedo Butcher, and Carmen is a new faculty member at the CAC. So we're very excited to be able to use this beautiful translation of Brother Lawrence's teaching. So Jim, I want to welcome you here to our first episode for Season 12

James Finley (1:08)

Yes, I'm looking forward to this series. I like Brother Lawrence so much, yes.

Kirsten Oates (1:12)

Yeah. Well, please tell us more about our new mystic.

James Finley (1:16)

Yes. Well, as always, we'll start by sharing what we know of Brother Lawrence historically, who he was historically, to help us understand who he is spiritually. I'd like to suggest too that there's a lesson in this for all of us. Who we are historically will all be dead soon. As we're in time, so in time, who we are historically is going to be who we were historically. But when we die, there shines forth who we eternally are. But who we eternally are is even now who we eternally are in time transcending time. And that's really a way to poetically understand the mystical intuition of ourselves. So these are like the autobiographical foundations of his awakening, which then helps us to look at the autobiographical foundations of our own awakenings. So Brother Lawrence was born in France in 1614, where he lived until his death in 1691 And at that time in France, in the social order, there was the elite class at the very top, the very wealthy. It was in the middle, would be analogous to middle class today, and then the poor. And the poor in his days were extremely poor, and he was born into that. So he was born of the common laborer. So he was born into that, the hardships of poverty, was his life.

Adding to the challenge of his life, it was in the midst of the 30 Years War. And the 30 Years War was kind of a complex war around a number of countries in Europe. And France was involved in that, was part of that 30 Years War. And so it added to kind of the crisis of the age, of the trials of the day. And another big factor of the 30 Years War is increased famine from the 30 Years War. So there was a lot of famine and people not getting enough to eat to stay alive and so on. So he had to deal with that. At 18 years old, in the midst of this, he has a spiritual awakening that changed his whole life. But it didn't change the ongoing details of his life, but it radically altered or metamorphosized his experience of his day-by-day life. And he shares a story that when he was 18 years old, he's looking at a tree. And in the tree, you get the sense that while looking at the tree, he becomes more present to himself.

And his awareness of his oneness with the presence of the tree. It's like a contemplative moment. And in his heightened awareness of himself in the presence of the tree, the presence of God shined forth and accessed his heart. So when they're looking at a tree, there's this mystical awakening of the presence of God and the ordinariness of the tree. What's interesting about this too, as we go through this session, is looking at our awakenings. And also, I think, an interesting insight with him to get a feel for his spirit. You don't get the feeling that there was rapture. Like Teresa of Avila, for example, she'd go into ecstasy. And that McTelda Magdebird and these different mystics. You get the feeling more that it wasn't rapture, but it was the depth to which that quickening touched him and accessed him in a very delicate, subtle way that just stayed with him. And I think that's true of us sometimes, too. When we look back at our own awakenings, sometimes they are emotionally very intense. But often they're not intense at all. It's like a quiet luminosity. It goes very deep that we can't explain. And this happened to him at 18 years old. At 19 years old, a year later, he joins the military. And Carmen points out in her commentary, this historical study, we really don't know why exactly. It could have been out of a patriotism of wanting to be part of that. But it could have been also just have something to eat. He could have been starving. And so he was in the military at 19 And there's two things there that really was a hardship for him. One is the things that he witnessed there in battle. Later he had PTSD from it, like the trauma he was exposed to. And also he received a very serious wound in battle in his leg, from which he was discharged from the military. He couldn't be in the military anymore. But he carried the wound in his leg for the rest of his life. Another thing is true with us, I think, in insight, is that there can be an illumination. And that illumination continues to quietly disappear when there is pain. But sometimes that's not what happens. Sometimes the internalized awakening kind of shines as it stains us in the pain itself, like an intermingling of pain and awakened liberation.