The great thing about meditating is that it faces you with yourself. It faces you with your attitude towards yourself, towards God, towards how you see your relationship with God. There is no escape. I am struck by the passive attitude of much present day spirituality.
“Mon Père, je m’abandonne a vous. Faites de moi ce que vous plaira. Quoi que vous fassiez de moi je vous remercie. etc.”*
It is as though there is a longing to be a passive little child in the arms of God. I wondered why. Maybe that is the image we carry around of ourselves – a helpless, innocent child; untainted, unsullied; innocent, open, loving and loved. This was the real me before I began to exert my independence and to wear the masks that we all wear, even with ourselves; before I did all the things I regret, before the hurts, the wounds, the blows. Now I no longer know which is the real me. My masks deceive even me. I am driven by vague longings which are never satisfied because they are never fully realised and what realisation there is turns to ashes as soon as it is tasted. And so the longing that one day, perhaps, the little child within will emerge and all the dross, all the false masks, the scars and the calluses will fall away. The child will be cradled on the breast of Christ and dandled with love.
This is what is wrong with much Christian spirituality. It is a search for passive, innocent, blissful childhood. But there is no child within.
There is a child within but it is a chimera, a mental construct, a memory, a symbol. I am sure one of the reasons why a happy childhood is such an important and necessary departure point for adulthood is because of the power of this symbol. If it is lacking then something fundamental and necessary is lacking. We have arrived where we are, adults, without the necessary qualifications and experience. We are expected to give to our children what we have never experienced. We feel we are both impostors and the victims of unfair fate which has dealt us a rotten hand. And there is always the longing…if only… For those who have had a happy childhood there are memories of unclouded joy which compare unfavourably with the problems, worries, tensions and anxieties of adulthood. It all becomes so tiring that the wishful dream of regression to innocent bliss can become overwhelming.
It is a powerful symbol, both for those who have had a happy childhood and for those who have not. People are drawn by it, they seek to possess it in reality. And, as in the market place where there is an expressed want the market will supply it, so too in religion. In spite of statements like, ‘Come to me all you who labour and are burdened.’ and ‘Unless you become like little children.’ I do not think that Jesus was offering passive bliss. I think he meant us to be much more proactive. This is very clear in ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is like’ parables where it is precisely those who sit back, do nothing, who leave it all to fate, who are the people who do not belong. But too many spiritual writers and commentators have interpreted him otherwise. It even colours our attitude to death. ‘Eternal rest give to them, O Lord.’ It conjures up a vision of Heaven as a vast nursery full of babies sleeping blissfully in their cots.
Prayer of Charles de Foucauld. Father I abandon myself to you. Do with me whatever you will. Whatever you do with me I shall thank you.