The Restoration Project

by Christopher H Martin

  This second step of humility asks us to become aware of the way we prioritize what we love, not just in theory but also in practice. Our hearts and minds might tell us one thing, but it is very likely that our behavior is telling the world something else. If we want to know what we love, our best data is to look at our budgets and our schedules. On whom or what are we spending our money and time? Do these decisions reflect our best values?

  For all of us, the answer to that last question is "no." We all have places in our lives where we spend an inordinate amount of time, money, and attention, often in ways that are unreflective. A breakthrough for me came several years ago when I was reading an article about micro-targeting in marketing. I had always imagined I had an independent and quirky sense of taste. I had thought the things that I wear, drive, eat, and listen to represent in a significant way who I was as a unique and independent human being. But as I read this article, I realized with a sinking stomach that I fit quite neatly into a kind of metropolitan VW-Starbucks-Banana Republic niche, and that given two or three pieces of information about me, people and computer programs could pretty accurately guess the rest. I believe, because I live in one of the most secular counties in the United States, that the only thing it wouldn't guess about me, given my profile, is that I am Christian. I was left with a dilemma that I continue to struggle with. Does my consumption match my highest Christian values?

  My consumption, which I had understood as a place of freedom, turned out to be a kind of trap, with my environment finely tuned to urge me to consume more. And I have been, and continue to be, a willing subject. In short, I am an addict to the culture, far too often allowing culture to determine what I desire. The cost of mindless consuming is that I might soon find myself in a real spiritual wilderness, not unlike the Israelites after leaving Egypt.

  But they soon forgot his deeds

  And did not wait for his counsel.

  A craving seized them in the wilderness,

  And they put God to the test in the desert.

  He gave them what they asked,

  But sent leanness into their soul.

  —PSALM 106:13-15

  An ancient practice that can help us detach a bit from our own consumption is to develop a habit of generosity toward God and the poor. The vow in Discipleship Groups reminds us of this practice when we say "by God's grace, I will be a good steward of my money, working toward giving ten percent to the church and those in need, mindful that 'where you treasure is, there your heart will be also' (Matthew 6:21)."

  The stakes are high. Our disordered consuming can lead to extraordinary loss. I have a friend who was married to a man with a rapidly accelerating cocaine habit. She told me that one day she looked over at him as they were sitting together on their couch. She realized that as she looked into his eyes, she could no longer see his soul. His desire for cocaine had gradually smothered any visible sign of his divine spark. With a shock and with deep sadness, she knew she had to leave him to keep her own soul alive and not get sucked into his pit. It was as though the last visible vestiges of the hand of the master had crumbled away from the painting.

  We are all addicts of something and are all in need of recovery. We all need restoration. The good news is that the power that restores us comes from God, not us. When Augustine writes of "rightly ordered love," he recalls the passage of scripture in which a bride pleads to her bridegroom to "set love in order in me" (Song of Solomon 2:4). The bridegroom acts, and the bride accepts. Likewise, when it comes to our desires for consumption, we must let God do the ordering. We only make ourselves available to God—and then get out of the way.

  Two fundamental Christian practices invite God to set love in order in us. Without them, we are likely to stall.

  The first is centering prayer. This form of Christian meditation was recovered and then reinterpreted in the 1960s by monks in the Benedictine tradition. They relied on a fourteenth-century English text called The Cloud of Unknowing to develop a simple practice for today's believers. Centering Prayer invites us to sit comfortably in a quiet place with our eyes closed for twenty minutes. During that time we use a short word to ever so gently nudge aside any thought that comes into our minds. That is it. It may sound simple, and it is, but it is not easy to implement in our lives. I have yet to meet anyone for whom it has been smooth sailing. I also have yet to meet anyone who has stuck with it and regretted the time invested in the practice.

  There is now great practical wisdom about what happens if you follow the practice faithfully. Thomas Keating, a monk in the Benedictine tradition, is one of the leaders of this movement of centering prayer and wrote a magnificent introduction to the practice in his book, Open Mind, Open Heart. He calls the practice "divine therapy,"11 a way of naming the process of God setting love "in order" in us. There are many layers of this "divine therapy," but for the purposes of this second step of desiring God above all, there is at least one very powerful characteristic. As we sit with our eyes closed, we are receiving no external stimulation and are satisfying none of our bodies' desires. For at least twenty minutes, we do not consume. Further, if a thought comes into our brains, "I want a cookie," at least in the moment, we get to practice letting it go. Centering prayer is a gentle beginning of the practices of fasting, detachment, and restraint, allowing God to set love in order in us. Centering prayer is a regular expression in our daily schedules of our love of God.

  Research shows that people who commit at least twenty minutes a day to prayer express a far greater level of satisfaction with their spiritual life than people who commit less time.12 So, in our Discipleship Groups, we commit to setting aside time regularly for prayer, "praying to God who is in secret" and working toward twenty minutes a day (Matthew 6:6). Through years of teaching, I have found it is helpful to first make a commitment to where you want to pray and when you want to pray, and then figure out what to do in that place and time. It can be a great pleasure to create a sacred, uncluttered space for our daily prayers. I've had students create spaces out of their desks, in their bedrooms, and even out of their closets. I had one student with a home life that was so chaotic, she chose to leave home a little earlier in the morning, park under a favorite tree near work, and then pull a religious icon out of the glove compartment to prop up on the dashboard. For her, as for all of us, the key was finding a time in the day, very often in the morning, to consistently take time to pray.

  The other practice to help train our desires toward God is daily reading of scripture. Augustine was one of two main influences on Saint Benedict. The other was the wisdom that came from the Desert Fathers and Mothers in Egypt from the fourth and fifth centuries. People throughout the Mediterranean came to the Egyptian desert to meet these stern yet compassionate people and soon collected their stories and sayings.

  Here is an example of one well-known piece of wisdom. In the scriptural tradition, "hardness of heart" is anything that keeps us from God, and "fear of God" is always the first step in a living relationship with God. Fear of God is the fundamental realization that God is God and we are not.

  The nature of water is soft, that of stone is hard; but if a bottle is hung above the stone, allowing the water to fall drop by drop, it wears away the stone. So it is with the word of God; it is soft but our heart is hard, but the man who hears the word of God often, opens his heart to the fear of God.13

  A simple practice like praying the Daily Office from The Book of Common Prayer, where a few psalms and some short readings are assigned for each day, provides us with a baseline of hearing the Word of God frequently, drop by drop.

  One of the great mysteries of the Christian faith is our belief that the Old and New Testaments are a living word, with the capacity to train us in righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16). In a way that is beyond our conscious knowing, the word of God slowly remakes our hearts, slowly puts love in order in us. In Discipleship Groups, we make learning scripture a lifelong project by vowing that "By God's grace, I will read, mark, learn, and inwardly d
igest14 the Holy Scriptures, trusting that they are 'inspired by God' for my 'training in righteousness' working toward knowledge of the entire book" (2 Timothy 3:16).

  If reading scripture becomes a daily habit, there will be days where it makes sense and speaks to us, and then other days when we won't seem to remember in the very next minute what we just read. Never mind. The practice is to keep showing up, if even for a few minutes, trusting that God's word in scripture restores.

  Just as we will never, in this life, achieve some perfect stance of watchfulness, neither will our loves ever be perfectly ordered. Although the daily practice of praying and reading scripture is important, we know that we'll continue the struggle as we gradually grow and mature. At the end of his Rule, Benedict calls his work a "little rule that we have written for beginners" (THE RULE OF SAINT BENEDICT, 73:8) and then refers to the Desert Fathers and Mothers as among those who are as close as we can come to perfection. Another story from the desert can put our own struggles in perspective.

  There was a certain elder who had fasted valiantly for fifty years, and he said: I have put out the flames of lust and avarice and vainglory. Abbot Abraham heard about it and came to him asking: Did you really say that? I did, he replied. Then Abbot Abraham said: So you go into your cell, and there is a woman lying on your mat. Can you think that she is not a woman? He said, No, but I fight my thoughts so that I don't touch that woman. Then, said Abbot Abraham, you have not killed fornication. The passion is alive, but it is bound. And now supposing you are on a journey and in the road among the stones and broken pottery you see some gold: can you think of it as if it were like other stones? No, he replied, but I resist my thoughts so that I do not pick it up. The Abbot Abraham said: You see, the passion is alive. But it is bound. Then Abbot Abraham said again: You hear about two brothers, of whom one likes you and the other hates you and speaks evil of you. They come to you: and do you receive them both alike? No, he replied, but I am tormented inside, trying to be just as nice to the one who hates me as I am to the other. Abbot Abraham said: The passions live, then. But in the saints they are only, to some extent, bound.15

  Our human cravings will never be fully extinguished. The desire for consumption of material goods, food, or drink may be bound but still lives on. The Desert Fathers and Mothers came to realize that the struggle with these distorted desires is itself a gift. Through this struggle, we realize in intimate, personal terms that we cannot save ourselves. The power and the initiative always come from God. It is the grace of God that saves, not our willpower. But, if we want to know and feel the grace of God, we are not released from the never-ending struggle.

  These first two Benedictine steps are about focusing our awareness on God and developing some detachment from the devices and desires of our hearts. They describe the interior habits of our hearts. In the next chapter we'll go a little deeper, exploring two steps that can only be followed once we have planted ourselves in a Christian community.

  CHAPTER 3

  Foundational Habits:

  Two Communal Steps

  3. Practicing Sacred Obedience

  4. Cultivating Patience

  The process of restoring Leonardo's painting, The Last Supper, took over two decades. In part, the restoration took so long because it was a large painting in terrible condition—but there were additional impediments. Barcilon's request to have the room closed to the public was denied, and so she and the other restorers were constantly working with the noise and distractions of tourists. Worse, several different Italian bureaucracies had authority over various aspects of the work, any of which could stop the work to question and criticize. Finally, there was an ebb and flow to the availability of money to pay for the work, depending on the whims of governments, corporations, and individuals. Restoration required patiently working with others.

  The painting's public restoration models an important lesson: just as Barcilon and the team had to work among the crowds and visitors, the task of restoring our souls to the image and likeness of God must occur in community. An eleventh-century French abbott, Bernard of Clairvaux, in his great commentary on the Twelve Steps of Humility, allows that we might make some progress on the first two steps of humility, which I have called keeping watch and desiring God above all, outside of a monastery. For steps three to twelve, however, Bernard insists that no progress is possible without being planted in a God-centered community.16 If we are to know who we truly are, if we are to be stripped of those things that block us from love, and if we are to claim quiet self-mastery, we must be part of a community and stay put, at least for a long season. Stability is the key to this chapter's communal steps of practicing sacred obedience and cultivating patience. We plant ourselves in a Christian community and gradually allow ourselves to be deeply shaped by the story that community tells and the life that it lives.

  Step Three:

  Practicing Sacred Obedience

  obedience for the love of God

  — THE RULE OF SAINT BENEDICT, 7:34

  Benedict's third step emphasizes strict obedience to a superior. Like "humility," the word "obedience" has a well-earned negative reputation. If someone were to ask what word we associate with the word "obedience," we would probably say "blind." It's all too easy to conjure up the violent obedience of goose-stepping Nazis or the self-destructive obedience of the Kool-Aid drinkers of Jonestown.

  Closer to home, if we ever took an introductory course in psychology, we probably learned about the Milgram experiments. These experiments placed Yale University undergraduates in a situation where they believed they were applying electrical shocks to people. They were not. The supposed victims were only actors. Other actors, dressed in lab coats, ordered the students to apply what the students believed to be steadily higher levels of electrical shocks, based on a dial. The majority of these Ivy Leaguers, on the orders of the people in lab coats, willingly administered shocks far in excess of any acceptable level of pain. The experiment is a reminder that we all have the potential to obey authority in a way that leads us to harm others and even ourselves.

  Perhaps we wonder if obedience can be a virtue at all. Maybe we believe that wisdom is found instead in a stance of skepticism and self-reliance. Maybe our best stance is simply and always to question authority. Perhaps we are more likely to do good if we listen only to our own devices and desires. I suspect that all of us, at some level, have deep sympathy with the New Hampshire state motto, "Live Free or Die." If obedience is going to be a helpful word for us, it will probably require some serious rehabilitation.

  Yet obedience does have another side. Just as it can be helpful to remember that the word humility shares a Latin root with the word for earth, humus, and so means not just groveling shame but groundedness, so it can be helpful to know that obedience shares a Latin root with the word to listen, audare. The obedient are those who listen well.

  I love to sing and take great pleasure when I am able to be part of a chorus of voices that strikes a chord that rings clearly and powerfully. My small voice, in that moment, becomes a part of something exponentially larger than itself. Yet my voice has become something larger not by asserting itself but rather by listening and blending and submitting to the sound of the whole.

  Listening did not come easily to me. In college I was a part of a men's a cappella singing group, essentially a traveling and performing fraternity. At the end of my first year in the group, I was given an award for being the least obedient, the one who did not listen. My ability to blend vocally was okay, but there was rarely a decision made or a project pursued that didn't include my voice chiming in with thoughts, opinions, and questions, most of them unsolicited. But I stuck with it, or rather they stuck with me, and I eventually became the president and emcee of the group.

  Now, one of my great joys in life is reuniting with my friends in the Society of Orpheus and Bacchus to sing the songs that are so deeply a part of me I feel as though I could never forget them. When I join the other first tenors in the final bl
ast of a chord of "John Henry," our signature song, I know I am home. Learning obedience in the SOBs, the nickname for the group, gave me one of life's greatest gifts: a community of lifelong friends.

  I have been told that when monks travel to other monastic communities, they can tell the health of the community by the quality of its singing. It is not a requirement to be a great singer to be a monk, and so the quality of the singing voices is almost always mixed. But good, loving, and healthy communities learn over time to blend their voices within the range of quality. I have a favorite CD, now sadly out of circulation, of the evening offices sung by English Carthusian monks. There aren't very many of the monks, and one is very old with a thin voice that often cracks. It doesn't matter. The brothers are united in their slow, attentive singing. The beauty is only enhanced by our ability, within the blend, to hear a few distinct, beloved voices.

  Benedictine monks or nuns are rooted in just one community where they learn sacred obedience. The people with whom they sing are also the ones with whom they negotiate whose turn it is to do the dishes and where the money for the burst sewer pipe will come from. Our lives are likely to be more divided. Our household and our place of work are likely to be entirely separate from the place where we pray and explore the life of God with others. Eventually, we can learn to listen deeply to our spouses, parents, and children for the love of God. We can learn to obey our bosses, manage our employees, and deal with our clients as though each were Christ himself. We strive for whole, integrated lives. But to achieve that level of integration, we first need to be anchored in an intentional Christian community that teaches the ways of Jesus. There are three practices we can follow to begin learning this step of humility, even if we aren't monks or nuns. These practices are joining a Christian community, befriending the poor, and committing to a Discipleship Group.