Saturday, March 8, 1997

Monk has sound advice on practicing the presence of God

By LAUREN R. STANLEY

Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service

ALEXANDRIA, Va. - "Familiarity breeds contempt."

It's an old saying, dating back at least to Aesop, the writer of those famous fables, in the 6th century B.C. Aesop used it in his fable, "The Fox and the Lion."

Since those ancient days, the phrase has been used by Mark Twain in his "Notebooks"; by Miguel de Cervantes in "on Quixote"; and by William Shakespeare (albeit with a slight change) in "The Merry Wives of Windsor."

It's such a familiar phrase that it indeed has the ability to breed contempt when we hear it. (What a cliche, we think.)

And yet it also is such a daily part of our lives.

How many times do we, each day, pass by the familiar and overlook those things that have become the norm for us?

How often do we ignore the glory of God's creation, simply because it is so familiar to us?

How often do we pay attention when we are doing something very familiar? Something like praying? Something like responding in church?

Isn't it often easier to mouth the words, rather than really thinking about them?

I know it is for me. Sometimes I find myself in church, speaking familiar words and not really paying attention. Rather, I'll be worrying about a sermon still to be preached, or about a change that will have to be made in the liturgy, or about how to say or do something else. And the next thing I know, the prayer is over and done, and I can't really remember praying.

I've become so familiar with the prayer that I treat it contemptuously.

When that happens, I tend to rely on the guidance of a 17th-century monk by the name of Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection. Early on as a monk, he, too, suffered from a wandering mind during prayers and meditations; he, too, wondered how to fix his mind on God, so that he wouldn't treat prayer - and God - contemptuously.

Brother Lawrence entered the monastic life at age 38, having been a soldier and a footman. When he first became a Discalced "Barefooted" Carmelite, he found that he could not meditate well, because he had so many stray thoughts distracting him.

Eventually, though, Brother Lawrence learned to overcome these distractions by devoting his entire life to a continual conversation with God. In everything he did, he found that if he first offered up the task to God, he could accomplish the task - and very well.

For 15 of his years as a monk, Brother Lawrence was assigned to work in the kitchen, a task that he first found distasteful. He did not like chopping and cutting, cooking and cleaning. And he did not think he did a very good job of any of those things, either.

But he found that if he went prayerfully to his tasks, there "was great ease in doing things there."

Brother Lawrence called this continual conversation the "practice of the presence of God." It was, he said, the life and nourishment of his spirit.

I learned how to treat the familiar with respect from the book about him called "The Practice of the Presence of God." A friend commended it to me when I admitted that frequently, familiarity was breeding contempt in my prayer life.

Try Brother Lawrence, my friend said. He can help. And he has.

"People search for methods," he wrote, "to learn to love God. They wish to arrive at it by I do not know how many practices. ... Is it not much shorter and more direct to do everything for the love of God ...? We do not need to be clear; all we need is to have a good go at it."

That is part of the joy of this monk: We don't have to be perfect in what we do - we simply have to try.

"Practicing the presence of God," he wrote another time, "is a little difficult in the beginning, but when it is done faithfully, it secretly works marvelous effects in the soul, brings a flood of graces from the Lord, and leads us ... to find God's presence everywhere."

Brother Lawrence offered up everything to God, made God's presence essential to everything he did, because, he said, "we are made for God alone."

I and countless others, under the guidance of this long-departed monk, have found that if we, too, practice the presence of God, we no longer act contemptuously toward those things that are familiar.

Instead, the familiar takes on added value, because it, too, is "made for God alone."

(Lauren R. Stanley, a former assistant news editor for the Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service, now attends Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Va., where she is studying for the Episcopal priesthood. Readers may write to Stanley care of Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service, 790 National Press Building, Washington, D.C., 20045.)