Useless

"There are many souls who close their ears against Him because they prefer to speak and hurry through vocal prayers as if a task had been set them to say a certain amount everyday. Do not imitate them. You are doing more by occasionally repeating a single petition of the Our Father than by repeating the whole of it many times in a hurry and not thinking [or willing] what you are saying." --St. Teresa of Avila

The contemplative life has always been attractive, yet intimating for me. I am not a Type-A Martha by nature, always needing to "do." And yet, in the past I had always found myself unable to sustain periods of solitude for more than a few days to a week. I do not feel like I am a "spiritual" person, nor do I fit in with people who are preoccupied with interior castles and locutions and this and that spiritual thing. And yet, when all is said and done, the spiritual life is all that really matters. 

 So, I'm in this kind of limbo--I'm a beginner in the interior life, but having the desire and will to grow in it for the soul purpose of growing closer in relationship to Christ. Lately, I have been doing that alone with regular visits to the Lord. I signed up for an 11pm slot to be an Adorer at our local chapel as well, so that I would be more systematic and accountable in my prayer life. 

I also joined an contemplative apostolate, which I was really on the fence about. If it weren't for the nudging of a woman who had been praying for me, apparently, I probably wouldn't have considered it. After all, I've been pulling back from my own men's group in favor of more time alone, and in more focused and intentional prayer. I feel like there is this gentle pull to go "into the deep" in order to grow in intimacy with God.

Since I run in largely traditionalist circles, there is this tendency to "check the boxes"--the vocal prayers in the Missal, the Office, the rosaries, etc. The objective litmus's of a robust prayer life that you can point to and ennumerate. 

But for anyone who has been in love, you know that the "doing" is merely a secondary byproduct of the "being." When you are in love, you could be walking along the beach or reading together or watching your beloved clip their fingernails and it would all be Heaven. Because the physical "doing" is merely a receptacle for the ethereal "being." In other words, it doesn't matter what you do--your time together is a "waste" by objective standards. And yet nothing could be more desirable or important to the lover.

For me, this is why the act of adoration fits well in my spiritual life. It's largely "useless" time spent, "wasted time," time where you are not "doing" anything. But the absence of activity, of distraction, of achieving or checking things off or mastering or completing...all this is really, well, the point. 

Everyone knows the story of the farmer St. John Vianney encountered who replied, when asked what he did in the church looking at the tabernacle, "I look at Him, and He looks at me." Could anything be more true, more to the point, and more essential? Love is not complicated. But the heart of love is not in the window dressing, the wrapping paper...it is in the gift of itself--that is, the gift itself. 

But adoration, through the eyes of the world, really is both an act of faith and an exercise in absurdity. A friend recently mentioned when he was in campus ministry at a Jesuit institution that even some of the priests scoffed at the "cracker worship" taking place. Sometimes I wonder myself, were the Lord in the monstrance replaced with an unconsecrated host, how it would change my prayer. If I couldn't tell the difference, what does that say about my prayer life, or even what we are willing to worship? It's a strange thought. You wonder how Isaac could have mistaken Jacob for Esau, or how Jacob could have mistaken Leah for Rachel? Does the power of our prayer in Adoration depend on our belief in True Presence, or the presence of the True Presence? It's something to ponder.

I have also been more intentional about "clearing out" a lot of activity that keeps me from spending this useless time in adoration; just as we have been trying to clear our physical house of "stuff" to make more "empty space" (a kind of minimalism-lite). There is value in the "white space" as any musician knows--the space between the notes is just as important as the notes themselves. 

Largely, though, the time spent in this kind of "useless prayer" in which I produce nothing, say nothing, sometimes even feel nothing is, I think, well spent. I hope to grow in my spiritual life, but not for its own sake, but only that I can draw closer to the Lord who remains hidden, small, and silent. I don't have that engineer type brain that needs to constantly be optimizing or quantifying. Sometimes it's enough to just be, and love, and accept love and confess love.