In Times of Anxiety by John Main OSB, Meditatio Talks 2009 CÂ
What is the difference between reality and unreality? I think one way in which we can understand that is that unreality is the product of desire. One thing we learn in meditation is to abandon desire, and we learn it because we know that our invitation is to live wholly in the present moment. Reality is simply being grounded in God, the ground of our being. Desire demands constant movement, constant striving. Reality demands stillness and silence. And that is the commitment that we make in meditating.
As each of you has found already from your own experience, in the stillness and in the silence, we learn to accept ourselves as we are. This sounds very strange to modern ears, above all to modern Christians who have been brought up to practise so much anxious striving: Shouldn’t I be ambitious? What if I’m a bad person; shouldn’t I desire to be better?
The real tragedy of our time is that we are so filled with desire, for happiness, for success, for wealth, for power, whatever it may be, that we are always imagining ourselves as we might be. So we rarely come to know ourselves as we are, and we rarely come to accept our present position.
But the traditional wisdom tells us: Know that you are, and that you are as you are. It may well be that we are sinners, and if we are, it is important that we should know that we are. But far more important for us is to know from our own experience that God is the ground of our being, that we are rooted in him, and founded in him. Each of us must know that personally, from our own experience, in our own hearts. This is the stability that we all need, not the striving and movement of desire but the stability and the stillness of rootedness. What each of us is invited to learn in our meditation, in our stillness in God, is that in him we have all things that are necessary.
The root from which we are sprung is Love. In him we are, and we know ourselves as lovable and loved. This is the supreme reality that Jesus came to preach, to communicate, to live, to establish. And it is established in our hearts, if only we will be open to it. This is what our meditation is about, because it is only from this love and with this love that we can understand ourselves aright and all creation. Without that rootedness in love, all we can see will be shadows and phantoms; and we will never be able to make contact with them because they have no reality.
The Hollow Men by T. S. Eliot (Public Domain)
We are the hollow menÂ
We are the stuffed menÂ
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, whenÂ
We whisper togetherÂ
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grassÂ
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour.Â
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lostÂ
Violent souls, but onlyÂ
As the hollow menÂ
                              II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreamsÂ
In death’s dream kingdomÂ
These do not appear:
There, the eyes areÂ
Sunlight on a broken columnÂ
There, is a tree swinging
And voices areÂ
In the wind’s singingÂ
More distant and more solemnÂ
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearerÂ
In death’s dream kingdomÂ
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behavesÂ
No nearer—
Not that final meetingÂ
In the twilight kingdom
                              III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we areÂ
Trembling with tendernessÂ
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
                              IV
The eyes are not hereÂ
There are no eyes hereÂ
In this valley of dying starsÂ
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting placesÂ
We grope togetherÂ
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unlessÂ
The eyes reappearÂ
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate roseÂ
Of death’s twilight kingdomÂ
The hope onlyÂ
Of empty men.
                              V
Here we go round the prickly pearÂ
Prickly pear prickly pearÂ
Here we go round the prickly pearÂ
At five o’clock in the morning.
Between the ideaÂ
And the realityÂ
Between the motionÂ
And the actÂ
Falls the Shadow
                                  For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conceptionÂ
And the creation
Between the emotionÂ
And the responseÂ
Falls the Shadow
                                  Life is very long
Between the desireÂ
And the spasmÂ
Between the potencyÂ
And the existenceÂ
Between the essenceÂ
And the descentÂ
Falls the Shadow
                                  For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine isÂ
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world endsÂ
This is the way the world endsÂ
This is the way the world endsÂ
Not with a bang but a whimper.
