Reiteration and Rumination

"Reading, to the fathers, always meant doing so in an audible voice and was called reiteration.  The word of God is reiterated in an audible voice and relished in our inner consciousness.  In this manner, it can find rest in our innermost recesses.  Reiteration here is like rumination.  After a while the words actually become one's own words.  Man, then, becomes the faithful storehouse for the word of God.  His heart becomes a divine treasury for it."  Matthew the Poor, Orthodox Prayer Life: the Interior Way, SVS Press.

Anyone who has been to a poetry reading or poetry slam knows the power of the written word being spoken.  It is a process of speaking things into palpable being and existence.  The words on paper have one level of power, the words on paper spoken into the air have a deeper and more rending power to open you up and split you in half.

We have had the good fortune of being able to save the stories verbatim - since the advent of writing and even more so with the printing press.  We have lost the magic of reiteration and rumination by individualizing the act of digesting words.  We read by ourselves and silently in the head.  The power of words exists in the sounds they make, the echoing they perform in the cosmic play of echolocation, and in the clarifying of the geologic landscape of our interior life that they reveal.

It is words and they sounds they call us to that take us further outside of ourselves and simultaneously deeper into ourselves.  Words pronounced.

Getting into the habit of muttering out what you are reading adds a layer of cementing those words to the heart that would not occur if they are only scanned and cognitively digested.  The scanning and cognitive digestion of words is only one layer of the meaning they offer.  The sounding and cadence of words has a heartfelt and soulful task to fulfill as well.  Not only faith but depth comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

Check out Matthew the Poor's volume and start to mutter while you read.  It'll deepen you (and keep people away cause they'll think you've finally gone of the ledge).  Also, try to develop a sense of the sound of words, of a practice of reiteration and rumination not only in your reading of spiritual texts and scripture, but of all the words you have gathered around you to inform and comfort you and the life you are carving out in this present life.

Ciao!

tjm+

From Chapter Three of my New Book Cairn-Space

There is an peninsula in Greece known as Mount Athos. The “Holy Mountain” or “Garden of the Virgin”—as it is also known—is peppered with monastic houses, kelli (small groupings of individual monastic“cells”), and caves for hermits. Each gathering of monastics has its own “rule of life”; its own way of living together.

Some monks gather often for meals and prayer. Others only weekly. Still others only for major feasts or sporadically. Some monks live their rule alone; completely by themselves.However they are organized as communities the goal is the same.The monks seek to perform some sort of spiritual practice and also to enter “hesychia”—the stillness/silence of God. There are as many forms for this as there are monks. They truly live in cairn-space.

In the Western Church, Saint Benedict and other “Rule” writers, focused more directly on the pattern of living that monks shared with one another in their monastic enclosures. The “Rules” looked at the apostolic notions hidden in a common life together: how much should people eat, how many items of clothing should they have, how often should they pray, how should they treat guests. Although these “rules” inhabit the communities on the Holy Mountain, they are not the focus of Eastern monasticism. The focus of the Eastern Orthodox monk is tending the heart and making it a place for the Divine meeting. Spiritual practiceand stillness: prayer and hesychia. The writing of “Rules” and the living of rules does not predominate.

The work that the monastics perform in their spiritual struggle is seen as therapy. It is what restores them to full health in their lives in the Spirit of God. In Classical times, spirituality and religion were seen as daughters of medicine. The spiritual life was a journey in the healing of the soul. It was a medical science. Today we have all but lost that diagnostic approach to faith.

As you begin to unpack the writings found in the Philokalia—the monastic guidebook second only to the Holy Scriptures—you do get a sense that the writers were addressing illnesses within man. Their spiritual athletics in the arena of asceticism were directed at helping believers to find the antidote and cure for their spiritual illnesses. All of the writings approach spirituality with an eye toward removing the things that block us from becoming whole and healthy in the Spirit.

The writings speak a lot about getting back to a simple practice when we have lost sight of the silent stillness of God. Return to a simple method when you are distracted and start again. Fall and get up. Fall and get up. Fall and get up, again.

This was what they taught as a model for growth. This perpetual return to purification in the life of the ascetic moved them into a place where enlightenment and union could unfold without interruption.

Where much of the Church today has been at a lack for an organized schema or anthropology of man—one that permeates the denominational traditions—the Orthodox Monastic Tradition has maintained a consistent and growing body of knowledge of what it means to be human and how to bring human beings back into rightful homeostasis; centered in God. The path toward wholeness clearly requires spiritual practices and the stillness/silence of God—“hesychia.”

The Holy Mountain continues to be a place in space and time in which men still hear the cry of God, “Flee, hide from men, be silent.” The monastics believe it is this medicine that will heal the world.

This peninsula is cairn-space. These monks are cairn-space.

Ciao!

TJM+

Holy Place + Sacred Space

Setting aside sacred places in the home is vital in establishing a consistent spiritual practice for formation and direction.  A place for development in the home, a place for prayer, meditation, and reflection becomes not only a starting point, but an actual agent of change in the spiritual journey.  The familiarity and comfort that comes from returning to a place over and over again becomes a healing balm and an antidote in the spiritual life.  Simply sitting down in a place that has become imbued with prayers and holiness over the days can bring us into focus and help us to center into our hearts - the place of all spiritual encounter and transformation.

Find a corner in the house, porch, or shed out back.  Place in this space a chair and an icon or two.  Make sure there is a candle and some matches.  There may be a book shelf placed there, as well.  Fill its shelves with writings that have the power to settle you into your heart.

Once this place is established you must force yourself to go there.  Go sit there.  Do nothing there, or do everything there.  You must first make the place, you must then visit it.  Say your prayers there.  Light your candles and burn your incense, turn within and seek the cave of the heart.  Sit in your heart while sitting in your sacred space.  This will build up the energy of the inner journey and will aid you in your quest for the Divine One.