Logs on a Fire
Charlotte Ostermann
When we barely have time for
conversations with friends, it can seem impossible to find uninterrupted
stretches of time to converse with God.
When I do sit down to pray, it takes a while to become truly still –
housekeeping, chauffeuring, shopping, sideline cheering, and the rest all
demand constant movement. My mind
actually gets more active when I take time to be quiet – making lists,
arranging logistics, watching interior ‘movies’ and fleeing from
focus on God. In all this noise of
mental and physical activity, how are we to hear the still, small voice, much
less dialogue with it? Taking
advice from St. Teresa of
According
to St. Teresa, if I could learn to simply welcome Him as a dear friend into
that interior ‘home’ of mine, our love would thrive. I trusted her experience, though she
went fathoms deeper yet into the life of prayer, because she had such a battle
herself against the distractions of her very active mind. Rather than learning to quiet the
intellect, she learned to ignore it as you might ignore a child who wanders
disruptively through your cocktail party – don’t give it the
attention it wants, and it will sit down and listen or wander away. She helped me realize that the interior
chapel is a place apart from the chattering mind, and one big enough for both
my quiet focus on God and the annoying prattle and fuss of a brain on
overdrive.
I
tend to lose this awareness – to become ‘flattened’ –
as I go about my daily life, but her
explanation of three interior faculties helps me to keep hold of the
three-dimensional nature of this ‘prayer chamber’ – able to retreat
into the presence of God throughout even the busiest day. She describes the ‘soul’ as
the innermost core of our being, which can feel deeply quiet and delighted even
when the outer layers are in turmoil. The intellect is the most superficial
faculty. The will is the
go-between, which can love and turn toward the Trinity at the center and attend
to the Presence undistracted by the wanderings of the mind.
Seen
in this way, the movement of the soul, described by St. Teresa, from the early
beginnings of prayer in mental attention to vocal prayers, to the prayer of
recollection – simple attention to the Presence of God with, perhaps, the
assistance of a visual image, to meditative prayer – chewing mentally on
spiritual reading material with the help of the Spirit, to the prayer of
quietude in which the will takes in the sweetness of God’s interior gifts
as a baby sucks to receive mother’s milk, can be better understood. Too often, she says, we contest with the
distractions of the mind to make God the object of its attention, instead of
turning our face by an act of free will toward God and waiting expectantly for
Him to come and give us an understanding that goes beyond the faculty of
intellectual apprehension.
The Church, in its communal prayers has
words through which even beginners-at-prayer may enter the Presence of God just
by becoming mentally present to the words recited in the liturgy, the Divine
Office, the rosary, etc…. These prayers, when I really attend to them as
she suggests, make me feel as though I am stepping out into the sunlight to
enjoy God’s presence with everyone I love. To enter through an inner door into the
same Presence, St. Teresa suggests we simply to imagine the face of Christ and
direct our attention toward Him many, many times a day until this movement is
effected easily. My will directs my
attention toward Him, no matter what distractions are raised by the errant intellect,
and every time I do it, that faculty of choice is strengthened so that the
turning-toward-Him is more and more natural with practice. I’ve noticed that it also
atrophies, like an unused muscle, when I neglect that practice!
Pretty
soon, we begin to want to invite Him to stay, to talk. At this point, go ahead and light a
small fire – take in a portion of spiritual reading and the intellect
will be attracted to the task of understanding it. Discuss it with your Holy Guest, sit
close enough to feel the warmth, put on another log as conversation flags, just
beware of smothering the flames with too much wood. Attending both to the soul’s delight
and the need to translate the reality of the Presence into action, you will
make resolutions to effect outward transformation of your life. As these are carried out, your will is
strengthened to attend to the Trinity and to obey. As this cozy scenario is repeated, day
after day, the space grows lofty and the fire radiates light and heat outward
to transform every aspect of your being.
He is more and more keeping it lit whether you are consciously praying
or not, because your hospitality has made a place for Him to remain, to dwell,
to expand within you.
The mind, will, and soul (or ‘heart’ as I think of this
innermost dimension) will gently grow into greater accord, or integration. Until St. Teresa taught me to understand
my interior faculties this way, I spent more time thinking about God than
conversing with Him. To live
‘in my head’ – over-dependent on learning and understanding
with the intellect – was the habit of a lifetime for me, and one not
quickly broken. Gradually I learned
to depend less and less on the reading material, and my heart itself –
that inner sanctum – grew more hospitable and undefended against God,
pain, correction, love. As