Evening Prayer Tuesday, 27 October 2020
To be nothing
Is to consent to being a simple creature.
This is the place of encounter with
“I AM that I Am.”
When there is no more “me, myself, or mine,”
Only “I AM” remains.
Then the “I” may fall away,
Leaving just the AM. . . .
Thomas Keating, “Out of Nothing”
Good evening and welcome to Evening Prayer
That this evening may be holy, good and peaceful,
let us pray with one heart and mind.
Silence is kept.
As our evening prayer rises before you, O God,
so may your mercy come down upon us
to cleanse our hearts
and set us free to sing your praise
now and for ever. Amen
Breathe in
Breathe out
Be still…
Come, O Spirit of God,
and make within us your dwelling place and home.
May our darkness be dispelled by your light,
and our troubles calmed by your peace;
may all evil be redeemed by your love,
all pain transformed through the suffering of Christ,
and all dying glorified in his risen life.
Amen.
Presence
I pause for a moment
and reflect on God’s life-giving presence
in every part of my body, in everything around me,
in the whole of my life.
Freedom
God is not foreign to my freedom.
Instead the Spirit breathes life into my most intimate desires,
gently nudging me towards all that is good.
I ask for the grace to let myself be enfolded by the Spirit.
Consciousness
Jesus, You are always there waiting for me.
Grant that I may be still more often.
That I may always desire to spend time in your presence.
To know Your peace, Your love.
THE WORD OF GOD
Isaiah 54:6–8
For the LORD has called you like a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit,
like the wife of a man’s youth when she is cast off, says your God.
For a brief moment I abandoned you,
but with great compassion I will gather you.
In overflowing wrath for a moment I hid my face from you,
but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you,
says the LORD, your Redeemer.
WORDS OF WISDOM
In this poem [quoted at the beginning of the prayers], one of the last in the collection, there can be no doubt that Thomas Keating is indeed talking about an elusive third dark night, what Bernadette Roberts called “the experience of no-self.” Its radical stripping is far deeper than the dismantling of our “emotional programs for happiness” that occurs in the Dark Night of Sense. It is even deeper than the fruit of the Dark Night of Spirit, which is the dissolution of the separate self into unitive consciousness. Thomas is here alluding to a third and yet more fundamental dissolution: the collapse of the self-reflective mechanism itself, that unique property of human consciousness which makes me realize “It is I who am experiencing this.” Oneness is attained not through an even more intense experience of union, but through a simple suspension of the subject/object polarity that created the perception of twoness in the first place. There is a whole new operating system at work now.
As Thomas writes, “When there is no more ‘me, myself, or mine,’ / Only I AM remains.”
When there is no fixed point of reference to “take it home to,” to make it about “my experience of I AM,” then there is only the bare “I AM.” Then even that may shed its skin. “Then the ‘I’ may fall away, / Leaving just the AM.” . . .
Those who have reflected on the biblical account will quickly catch the double meaning of the repeated use of “I AM” in this poem. It describes not only our own self-reflexive awareness; it is also the name by which God reveals Godself to Moses in the wilderness. “Who shall I tell them has sent me?” asks Moses. To which God replies, “I Am that I Am” [Exodus 3:14]. (In Hebrew, YHWH is the sacred, unutterable name of God.)
Thomas Merton said something quite like this shortly before his own death. He stated,
You have to experience duality for a long time until you see it’s not there. . . . Don’t consider dualistic prayer on a lower level. The lower is higher. There are no levels. Any moment you can break through to the underlying unity which is God’s gift in Christ. In the end, Praise praises. Thanksgiving gives thanks. Jesus prays. Openness is all.
That, I believe, is the real teaching awaiting us in this poem and manifest in Thomas Keating’s own life.
Cynthia Bourgeault
https://cac.org/falling-away-from-i-am-2020-10-27/
Copyright © 2018 by CAC. Used by permission of CAC. All rights reserved worldwide
PRAYERS AND INTERCESSIONS
We pray for the world…
Lord, in your mercy
hear our prayer.
We pray for the universal church of Christ…
Lord, in your mercy
hear our prayer.
We pray for one another and all those known to us…
Lord, in your mercy
hear our prayer.
The Lord’s Prayer
As our Saviour taught us, so we pray
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power,
and the glory are yours
now and for ever.
Amen.
Final Prayer
Abide with us, Lord, for it is evening,
and day is drawing to a close.
Abide with us and with
your whole Church,
in the evening of the day,
in the evening of life,
in the evening of the world;
abide with us and with all
your faithful ones, O Lord,
in time and in eternity.
Amen.
THE BLESSING
Revd. Ernesto Lozada-Uzuriaga
