Annunciation House Newsletter - Winter 2004

An Invitation to Contemplative Service

By Patrick Suhrbier

Thomas Merton, when describing the faith of the “Desert Fathers,” wrote,

Love in fact is the spiritual life, and without it all other exercises of the spirit, however lofty, are emptied of content and become mere illusions…Love, of course, means something much more that mere sentiment, much more than token favours and perfunctory alms deeds. Love means an interior and spiritual identification with one’s brother, so that he is not regarded as an “object” to “which” one “does good.” Love takes one’s neighbor as one’s other self, and loves him with all the immense humility and discretion and reserve without which no one can presume to enter into the sanctuary of another’s subjectivity…

It is hard to really love others if love is to be taken in the full sense of the word. Love demands a complete inner transformation—for without this we cannot possibly come to identify ourselves with our brother. We have to become, in some sense, the person we love. And this involves a kind of death of our own being, our own self.

Over the years I have often reflected on this passage by Thomas Merton that describes the faith and intention of those seeking selfless love, a love that takes “one’s neighbor as one’s other self.” When I first read this years ago, it shocked and inspired me. At the time, my feeling was that selfless love was something that one simply chose to express or not express. I had very little sense that selflessness was something to be cultivated in our lives and more freely uncovered over time. Not growing up in any particular spiritual tradition, I was not familiar with the notion of engaging in a contemplative path to reveal a love that goes beyond notions of self and other. This passage was my first insight into the possibility of cultivating a contemplative life, a life that could begin to guide me closer to the depths of this genuine love.

It has now been two years since I left Annunciation House and entered into a monastic community in Nova Scotia. Although this place seems quite distant from the life I loved so deeply, I am amazed by how the work of the houses seems so present here at the Abbey. I see now that there was a quiet element of the work underlying all our activities, empowering them and making them genuine acts of service, in contrast to political activism, social service, or acts of charity. Though these are valid ways to work and serve in the world, genuine service seems to emphasize something that these other activities don’t—namely, contemplation.

Looking back, it is easier to see how the work of Annunciation House is built on a foundation of and pervaded by contemplation. It seems that when volunteers fully connect with contemplation, they touch the heart of genuine service. For me, this was a process of continually having my selfishness exposed in order to move into experiences of selflessness.

When I said farewell to Annunciation House, I thought I was leaving a community of service to enter a contemplative community. I believed that to cultivate a contemplative life, I had to live in what I thought were the only communities of contemplation—monasteries. But soon after arriving at the Abbey, I quickly realized that this distinction between a life of service and a life of contemplation does not exist.

To my surprise, I discovered how genuine service communities, and Annunciation House in particular, are communities of contemplation. It now is clearer to me that both the path of service and the path of monasticism are paths that support the development of a contemplative life—a life that has the power to reveal selfless love through the internal transformation that Merton talks about. Such a transformation occurs when we bring contemplation and prayer into the center of our lives, and when our actions are filtered such a way that our poverty of heart is honestly acknowledged. Then we opened further to the depths of true selflessness.

For many of us, “contemplative life’ evokes an image of a life that is peaceful, slow, relaxed, thoughtful, and remote—a life that seems distant from our busy lives. Given this definition, it seems doubtful that a genuinely transformative contemplative life could be discovered amid a life of service.

Having discovered just how busy and demanding monastic communities are, I realize that a life of contemplation is accessible and immediate in our lives, regardless of how busy we are. It simply takes a certain amount of intention and effort to allow a contemplative life to emerge and be sustained within demanding circumstances.

It is apparent to me that both Annunciation House and the Abbey provide the ingredients to cultivating a contemplative life, even though they may mix the ingredients in different proportions. These essential elements include community living, service, reflection, prayer, and rest. Through a combination of these components, a healthy contemplative life can take root. At first the components are quite distinct and separate in our lives, but as they are strengthened and become more rooted in us, it becomes harder to distinguish them from one another. As Thomas Merton wrote, “How mistaken I was to make contemplation only a part of life. For a contemplative, his whole life is contemplation.”

Often when we approach service, we see it as an expression of the love and concern that have already developed within us. Many of us see our service as a response to injustice or suffering, or a way to share our resources. These motivations are only a doorway into service. Once we enter, service becomes an invitation to see more clearly how imperfect our love is and just how closed our hearts really are. Service does this, not to condemn us for the poverty that lies in our hearts, but to open our eyes to the vast journey we have to make to discover the depth of the word “love.”

This is the journey that becomes our contemplative life. Monastics are engaged in the same journey. Out of an intense wish to fully love the world, they enter into a community that specifically points out the poverty that lies within their hearts, leading them to discover the inner transformation sought by the desert fathers.

Whether we cultivate this life through service, in a family and with a career, or in a monastery, eventually we discover that there is no separation between our contemplative life and our everyday activities. But to cultivate and genuinely live this life of contemplation, one must nourish it with much attention.

The contemplative life that I speak of here is one that trains us constantly in walking a path that opens us more and more to the depths of selfless love. It trains us to be relentlessly vigilant of the state of our minds and hearts, moment after moment, no matter what we are engaged in. In doing so, we witness more straightforwardly how self-absorbed we can be, even amid acts of generosity or service. We discover through this looking a self-absorption or clinging to a small self that closes our hearts.

At the Abbey, it has been easier for me to see how vital it is to balance service, reflection, and prayer in order to cultivate a contemplative life. Through a consistent daily schedule, we maintain a balance among meditation, reflection, and service. Four hours are set aside for meditation, two hours for study, six hours for work and service, and one day a week is open and unscheduled. Forced to maintain this equilibrium between service and reflection every day, I am aware of how each element nourishes the other. A contemplative life takes root that serves as a path to slowly wear away the self-absorption and ego that alienate us from the world and obscure selfless love.

In my time at the houses, I did not create enough time for reflection, prayer, and rest. It was easy to succumb to the constantly overwhelming demands of the house and forget how essential these other aspects of service were in making our work effective and beneficial to others. It is good to allow ourselves to be stretched, letting go of what we think are our personal needs, but not to the point of sacrificing our time for reflection or silence. In doing so we risk engaging in our service in a way that is routine and lifeless.

Both monasticism and service are invitations to walk a path that exposes our selfishness, fear, and tendencies to close down to our world. They do this not to condemn us, but to give us the opportunity to see clearly where we hold onto this selfishness and how we can enter into more uncertain spaces of selflessness. Though the monastery makes it easy to immerse our lives in reflection and prayer, the chaos and demands of the houses possess a tremendous power to expose our selfishness. Again and again, we are pulled beyond ourselves and our desires, to a place where we let go and discover a deeper concern for the world. It is from these glimpses that a contemplative life arises. It is through this recognition of how vast our love could be that a sincere longing to engage in the contemplative life begins to grow. These initial sparks of the contemplative life will fail to ignite a self-sustaining fire unless we fan them with some balance of reflection and silence.

At least at first, service is a path we walk to encounter more profound experiences of love. Eventually, our service and actions allow us to more sincerely and skillfully express this love. It is only through developing such a contemplative life that we can bring some insight and wisdom to situations of confusion, violence, and injustice, making it possible for us to help alleviate some of the suffering that exists within and around us.