"I must talk about God, or I cannot keep him in my mind. I must give Him away in order to have him." That is the law of the spirit world. What one gives, one has, what one keeps to oneself one loses.
-Frank C. Laubach, Letters by a Modern Mystic
He approaches the discipline of contemplation through "mindfulness." He begins an experiment where he tries to think about God intentionally for one fifth of the day. His goal is to think about God in all his waking moments. This is not an OCD spirituality. It is simple "mindfulness." This is what Paul means when he says "pray without ceasing." Well, that's the connection I make. Here's a letter from January 20, 1930.
Living in the atmosphere of Islam is proving - thus far - a tremendous spiritual stimulus. Mohammad is helping me. I have no more intention of giving up Christianity and becoming a Mohammedan than I had twenty years ago, but I find myself richer for the Islamic experience of God.This is one of the first letters in the book...and it is one that I have returned to a couple of times. His willingness to learn from Mohammad in order to be a better Christian is inspiring. It is also, though there were surely contemplatives in the US when Laubach was living, a sign of a basic spiritual drought in our country. There was little conscious connection for Protestants with the mystical/spiritual practices of Christ.Islam stresses the will of God. It is supreme. We cannot alter any of His mighty decrees. To try to do so means annihilation. Submission is the first and only duty of man.
That is exactly what I have been needing in my Christian life. Although I have been a minister and a missionary for fifteen years, I have not lived the entire day of every day in minute by minute effort to follow the will of God. Two years ago a profound dissatisfaction led me to begin trying to line up my actions with the will of God about every fifteen minutes or every half hour. Other people to whom I confessed this intention said it was impossible. I judge from what I have heard that few people are really trying even that. But this year I have started out trying to live all my waking moments in conscious listening to the inner voice, asking without ceasing, "What Father, do you desire said? What, Father, do you desire done this minute?"
It is clear that this is exactly what Jesus was doing all day every day. But it is not what his followers have been doing in very large numbers.
Bonhoeffer remarked that when he visited Union Theological Seminary in New York (roughly about the same time Laubach wrote this book) that the entire curriculum was about "practical theology." Systematic theology, patristics and the study of prayer itself was not the focus of the curriculum. Though this suggested something admirable about American Protestant Christianity (that faith and works go together), there is still a risk of the actions losing their Christian intention: which is to be Christ in the world. Who was Christ? The Son of God, Immanuel, God enfleshed, the person who prayed without ceasing. Laubach, at least this is the connection I make, is trying to rediscover the aspects of Christianity that American Protestantism has left behind.
It's been almost a century since he penned these words. But I think he had his finger on our common trouble in much of American Christianity, even those who are not protestant. The theology and the action, the prayers and the common (oft dull or boring and not the stuff of legend) life of Christian are all to be engagements with the will of God. We are to live - in our own way - exactly as Laubach suggests "so that no thought save the thoughts of God shall take birth in any human mind."
It's a good book. I commend it to your attention.
Here's a pdf.
Posted by tripp at November 27, 2007 05:48 AM