BOOK NOTES: THE WAY OF THE HEART pt. I -- SOLITUDE

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The Compulsive Minister

"Our society is not a community radiant with the love of Christ, but a dangerous network of domination and manipulation in which we can easily get entangled and lose our soul. The basic question is whether we ministers of Jesus Christ have not already been so deeply molded by the seductive powers of our dark world that we have become blind to our own and other people's fatal state and have lost the power and motivation to swim for our lives" (p. 11).

"In general we are very busy people. We have many meetings to attend, many visits to make, many services to lead. Our calendars are filled with appointments, our days and weeks filled with engagements, and our years filled with plans and projects. There is seldom a period in which we do not know what to do, and we move through life in such a distracted way that we do not even take the time and rest to wonder if any of the things we think, say, or do are worth thinking, saying, or doing" (p. 12).

"Why do we children of the light so easily become conspirators with the darkness? The answer is quite simple. Our identity, our sense of self, is at stake. Secularity is a way of being dependent on the responses of our milieu. The secular or false self is the self that is fabricated by social compulsions... The compulsion[s] manifest [themselves] in the lurking fear of failing and the steady urge to prevent this by gathering more of the same -- more work, more money, more friends" (p. 13).

"Pastors are angry at their leaders for not leading and their followers for not following. They are angry at those who do not come to church for not coming and angry at those who do come for coming without enthusiasm. They are angry at their families, who make them feel guilty; and angry at themselves for not being who they want to be. This is not an open, blatant, roaring anger, but an anger hidden behind the smooth word, the smiling face, and the polite handshake. It is a frozen anger, an anger that settles into a biting resentment and slowly paralyzes a generous heart. If there is anything that makes the ministry look grim and dull, it is this dark, insidious anger in the servants of Christ" (p. 14).

The Furnace of Transformation

"Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude, we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self" (p. 15).

"Solitude is the place of the great struggle and the great encounter -- the struggle against the compulsions of the false self, and the encounter with the loving God who offers Himself as the substance of the new self" (p. 16).

"The struggle is real because the danger is real. It is the danger of living the whole of our life as one long defense against the reality of our condition, one restless effort to convince ourselves of our virtuousness. Yet Jesus did not come to call the virtuous, but sinners' (Matthew 9:13). That is the struggle. It is the struggle to die to the false self. But this struggle is far, far beyond our own strength... The confrontation with our own frightening nothingness forces us to surrender ourselves totally and unconditionally to the Lord Jesus Christ... Only Christ can overcome the powers of evil. Only in and through him can we survive the trials of our solitude" (p. 18-19).

"As we come to realize that it is not we who live, but Christ who lives in us, that He is our true self, we can slowly let our compulsions melt away and begin to experience the freedom of the children of God" (p. 20).

"We have, indeed, to fashion our own desert where we can withdraw every day, shake off our compulsions, and dwell in the gentle healing presence of our LORD. Without such a desert we will lose our own soul[s] while preaching the gospel to others. But with such a spiritual abode, we will become increasingly conformed to Him in whose Name we minister" (p. 21).

A Compassionate Ministry

"Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to the place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it... We ignore our greatest gift, which is our ability to enter into solidarity with those who suffer. It is in solitude that this compassionate solidarity grows... In solitude, our heart of stone can be turned into a heart of flesh, a rebellious heart into a contrite heart, and a closed heart into a heart that can open itself to all suffering people in a gesture of solidarity" (p. 25).

"In order to be of service to others, we have to die to them; that is, we have to give up measuring our meaning and value with the yardstick of others. To die to our neighbors means to stop judging them, to stop evaluating them, and thus to become free to be compassionate. Compassion can never coexist with judgment because judgment creates the distance, the distinction, which prevents us from really being with the other" (p. 26).

"Thomas Merton, who described these monks as people who swam for their life in order not to drown in the sinking ship of their society, remarks: 'They knew that they were helpless to do any good for others as long as they floundered about in the wreckage. But once they got a foothold on solid ground, things were different. Then they had not only the power but even the obligation to pull the whole world to safety after them'" (p. 29-30).