Last Wednesday, my centering prayer group watched a short video featuring Father Joseph Boyle, the Abbott of St. Benedict’s Monastery in Snow Mass, Colorado. Boyle died October 21 at the age of 77. He entered St. Benedict’s in 1959 and served under Fr. Thomas Keating, who was the monastery’s first Abbott. Keating also died last October, on October 25. He was 95. In God’s strange timing, both these pillars of the Centering Prayer world departed the planet within days of each other. Both of them played pivotal roles in bringing Centering Prayer to everyday people like me. I am so grateful for them.
In the video we watched, Boyle shared a story about a meeting that he attended with Fr. Keating. It was an interfaith conference with leaders from both Eastern and Western religious traditions. During one of their group sessions, a participant asked Boyle and his group a question that went something like this:
“What do you have to show for your spiritual journey?”
Boyle said there was an awkward pause as his group tried to formulate intelligent responses. It was a question that caught them off-guard. Maybe they panicked a little, the way you do when a teacher puts you on the spot in a class discussion. After all, in an interfaith dialogue, you want to have reasonable, appropriate responses to questions; you don’t want your tradition to come up short.
Fr. Keating finally broke the silence. Boyle reports that he said, “I have nothing at all to show for it. If anything, I think I’ve gotten worse. All I have is total trust in the love and mercy of God.”
There you have it.
That right there is the secret of life, my friends, and a balm for the soul.
I don’t have tattoos, but if I did, this would be worth putting on my wrist. Granted, it’s a little long for a wrist tattoo, but you get the picture.
“Nothing to show but total trust in the love and mercy of God.”
This is an antidote to so much of my angst and fear: that I’m not enough, that I don’t do enough, that what I do isn’t right, that whatever I’m doing there’s probably something else I should be doing instead.
This is also an antidote to a warped picture of Jesus that I’ve long carried, one born of a confused interpretation of Matthew 25, the parable Jesus tells where the master says, “Great job, guys!” to the servants who invest his money well, and “Loser!” to the one who is afraid and buries it in the ground. Actually, to that servant, the master says, “Throw that useless servant into outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Gives you a little incentive to be a good investor, no? To do the right stuff? Because even more than that, what does the master say to the other servants?
“Well done, my good and faithful servant… Let’s celebrate together!”
For many years, I’ve longed to hear those words from Jesus. In order for this to happen, I’ve thought that I need to show up at the pearly gates with a nice resume of things accomplished and a happy sense of having reached my true potential on earth. It’s what I should strive for every day. That’s what Jesus wants, right?
Maybe not.
Maybe there’s just this.
“I have nothing to show but total trust in the love and mercy of God.”
I’m not claiming to understand all the theology here; this passage is a doozy. But what if I take Fr. Keating’s words to heart and rest in the fact that everything, everything, is God’s grace? That God’s grace is the beginning and the end, and any seeming “progress” I make along the way is God’s doing, God’s work, God’s love? What if I could live out of that place, and know to my depths that I am deeply, entirely, completely and totally loved, in spite of anything I do or don’t do?
I think that would be enough.
And if Fr. Keating, one of my teachers and mentors and one of the holiest men around, said he had nothing to show for his spiritual journey? Well, then it’s OK that I don’t either.
I found this lovely tribute video to Fr. Keating. It’s a gift to hear him talk about his life in his own voice.
Grace and peace to all of you, my friends. Would love to hear your thoughts on this.
1 Comment
Thank you Robin for this warm and loving gift.