The Ladder of Silence

THE LADDER OF SILENCE

The ladder of silence consists of seven steps.

The first step is habitual prayer.

The second step is to speak only when necessary, whatever necessary, to the extent possible.

The third step is to reduce the noise of our external world under our control to a practicable minimum.

The fourth step is to grow in constant conversation with God and thereby to deepen our union with him.

The fifth step is to speak out against injustice and oppression.

The sixth step is to keep silent in the face of insult or injury.

The seventh step is to imitate Christ in his suffering and death on the cross.

***

Praying Hands (1508) by Albrecht Dürer

The ladder of silence consists of seven steps.

The first step of silence is habitual prayer.

If the language of God is silence, then the first step must be to learn it, listening in silence and speaking in silence. Silence is a conversation wherein words audible to us alone give voice to the desires residing deeply in our hearts and our hearts give voice to our inaudible desires.

Are our desires those of God? Evil desires arise from our own wells, not from God.

By forming habits of prayer, we begin to understand the nuances of silence, its indigenous idioms. We become fluent speakers, expert listeners of a second language, no longer visitors but inhabitants of a strange, not altogether alien land.

If the language of prayer is interior silence, it is fostered by exterior silence. We must quiet ourselves, speak less and less, only what is necessary, to the extent possible. This is the second step.

How can we hear ourselves, more so, listen to God, if the noise ever present in our midst—street vendors brandishing trinkets—continually calls out, hankering for our attention? And then our own mouths condemn us when they demonstrate the utter worthlessness of what we say.

Many times the Word of God tells us to bridle our tongue, to yank at the reins in order to control its impulse toward wildness. Religion is vain, we are told, if it does not control our tongue. Our tongue holds the power of life and death. Words are golden apples in silver settings—they persuade kings and break bones. Where words are many, sin is not wanting. From the same mouth come blessings and curses. And so on.

Walking Man (1960) by Albert Giacometti

We ascend the third step of silence when we strive to bring the noise of the external world under our control, reducing it to a practicable minimum.

Our motivation is spiritual. We seek to reduce the din of the external world because the voice of God is not heard in hurricanes, earthquakes, or fire, but in stillness.

When the Red Army instigated the Battle of Berlin, the boom of the artillery blasts punctured the eardrums of the soldiers, causing them to bleed. Debilitating noise—noise that overwhelms our entire being—destroys our capacity to hear.

Tiniest noises, sufficiently invasive, can disturb a near perfect silence and impair our experience of stillness. A ceiling mouse will gnaw away not only at the rafters but also at our peace.

Despairingly, you might say that stopping noise is like outspreading our arms to stop the ocean from touching land. Consider then that there are many activities that we could immediately bring to heel—our time jawing on social media, slumping in the sofa in front of the television set, or commuting, stereo system endlessly streaming—in order to build our dome of silence.

When we have done what we can in order to cultivate our spirit of silence, we are rewarded with conversation with God in friendship. Gratuitously, he lifts us up to the fourth step, which is to speak and listen to the Father as his children, to Jesus as a brother, to the Holy Spirit as a constant companion, and to all three persons of the Trinity in friendship. We become seekers and finders.

The fourth step of silence is to grow in constant conversation with God and thereby to deepen our union with him.

In our daily lives, God speaks to us in manifold ways. He shows us his presence in creation—in the heavens, the moon and the stars, innumerable creatures—the sea monsters in the abyss, Leviathan—everything visible. He speaks to us through his Word and his breath, the Holy Spirit. He is seen, touched, and felt in the Holy Eucharist. He is present as the face of Jesus in our fellow human beings, in the words of Father Christian de Chergé, “the God in whose face I see yours.”

The Prophet Jeremiah, detail, Sistine Chapel (c. 1508-1512) by Michelangelo

The fifth step of silence is a contradiction in terms. It is to speak out against injustice and oppression, according to the fourth beatitude, “Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice.” It is to imitate Christ in his public life of prophecy.

To speak out—a type of action—against injustice and oppression springs from our deep interior silence, our union with God in prayer. We are stricken by a moral imperative, the compulsion of Jeremiah the prophet. In our prayer, outrage and confusion is met with understanding, clarity, affirmation, wisdom, anointing, and courage, according to the providence of God. We are touched and called, as it were, like the prophets of old.

The sixth step of silence is to keep silent in the face of insult or injury.

This step identifies us more closely with Christ in his passion. In his public life, Jesus answered in wisdom—irrefutably—Pharisaic challenges to his religious and spiritual teachings and to his Messianic claims. His life of preaching upending the religious establishment could only but culminate in his ignominious rejection at Jerusalem, the mount of which he boldly ascended. Before the Sanhedrin and the judgment seat of Pilate, he responded truthfully, without retaliation, for which he was unjustly and with utmost cruelty condemned.

Torture Stone, Urakami Cathedral, Nagasaki, Japan

The seventh step of silence is to imitate Christ in his suffering and death on the cross.

We suffer and die in silence because our union with Christ is hidden and known only to God. Our silence is meek because we take up our cross in obedience to God’s will and to Jesus’ teachings. In embracing our very own personal cross, we look forward to Jesus’ promise that those who suffer and die in Christ will join him in the resurrection in glory on the Last Day. We act for love’s sake because it is for the sake of Christ that we willingly carry our cross.

Is there a step beyond the seventh?

Upon crossing the threshold of death and passing on to the next life, we take an eternal, irrevocable step. We might say that it is the eighth step of silence beyond our present life.

Medieval society conceived that the heavenly bodies, the sun, moon, planets, and stars, were embedded in a series of celestial spheres revolving about the earth like nested Matryoshka dolls, empowered in motion by an outermost sphere, Primum Mobile, beyond which, occupying the outermost region, subsisted an empyrean heaven in which God dwelled with his elect. The spheres were related to one other in space according to a series of proportions recapitulating musical intervals, Musica Universalis or “Music of the Spheres.” Musica Universalis was a mathematical series, silent music.

Those who pass on to the next life will join the silent music of the celestial spheres in eternal praise of God in a manner undisclosed to the present life. It is the eighth step of silence.

The Music of the Spheres, Renaissance  Italy engraving

Originally published in The Montréal Review (March 2017)

Symbols of the Spiritual Journey

Metéora cliffs

SYMBOLS OF THE SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

Since the ninth century the rock cliffs of Metéora have towered, practically inaccessible, high above the plains of Thessaly, Greece. In order to escape the tumult of the world, intrepid monks have ascended the forbidding natural formations, resorting to a combination of folding ladders, ropes, baskets, and nets.

Hundreds of years passing, they built and inhabited up to 24 monasteries. Only six remain today.

Early last century steps were cut into the rock and the government after the Second World War constructed roads all the way up to the very perimeter of the remaining monasteries. St. Stephen’s Monastery, for example, is accessible without any climbing at all. Motoring up the road, visitors have but to step across the concrete footbridge spanning a windy chasm to arrive at the monastery door.

Metéora illustrates the truism that there is more than one route to a single destination. It is a metaphor that invites us to visit historic conceptions of the spiritual journey from the standpoint of multiple routes. We will touch upon watershed conceptions—the ladder, the threefold way, the mountain, the interior castle.

Le Songe de Jacob (c. 1500) by Nicolas Dipre

The Ladder

A common image in monastic literature is that of the ladder. Jacob’s ladder is probably the origin of this image. “Then he had a dream: a stairway rested on the ground, with its top reaching to the heavens; and God’s messengers were going up and down on it.” (Genesis 29:13)

In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, the most famous—and elaborate—exposition of the image of the ladder is found in Saint John Climacus’ The Ladder of Divine Ascent. It is a mature exposition of a long tradition. In this work Saint John divides progress in the spiritual life into 30 steps, organized into three major groupings. The first part describes the break with the world and the exile into the desert and consists of three steps. The second part, consisting of 23 steps, describes the practice of the virtues of the active life. They include virtues at the foundation of the monastic life, such as obedience or penance; virtues invoked in the struggle against the passions; and virtues of a higher attainment, such as simplicity or discernment. The third part consists of four steps describing the virtues of the contemplative life—stillness, prayer, dispassion, love.

The image of a ladder is also a central motif in the Rule of Saint Benedict, written about one century before The Ladder of Divine Ascent. The Father of Western monasticism describes the spiritual life as an ascent in twelve degrees of humility leading up to the “perfect love of God that casts out fear.”

Hence, brethren, if we wish to reach the very highest point of humility and to arrive speedily at that heavenly exaltation to which ascent is made through the humility of this present life, we must by our ascending actions erect the ladder Jacob saw in his dream, on which angels appeared to him descending and ascending.

By that descent and ascent we must surely understand nothing else than this, that we descend by self-exaltation and ascend by humility.

And the ladder thus set up is our life in the world, which the Lord raises up to heaven if our heart is humbled. [1]

In Concerning the Four Rungs of the Ladder of Monks, or The Ladder of Monks, for short, Guigo II, third prior of La Grande Chartreuse, originates the scheme of prayer in four steps—reading, meditation, prayer, contemplation. Lectio, meditatio, oratio, contemplatio. It is a scheme that has long endured.

“This is a ladder for monks,” Guigo II says, “by means of which they are raised up from earth to heaven. It has only a few separate rungs, yet its length is immense and incredible: for its lower part stands on the earth while its higher part pierces the clouds and touches the secrets of heaven.” [2]

The Threefold Way

One of the most influential schemes describing progress in the spiritual life originates in Pseudo-Dionysius, late fifth century, whose true identity is lost to history. Imbued with Neoplatonism, Pseudo-Dionysius divided the spiritual life into the threefold way of purgation, illumination, and perfection as an ascent à la Proclus back to God.

The threefold way of purification, illumination, and perfection is prominent in The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, where Pseudo-Dionysius assigns a different function of the threefold way to each of the three clerical orders of deacon, priest, and hierarch or bishop, respectively. [3]

Pseudo-Dionysius holds the honor of originating “mystical theology” as a descriptive term and of advancing negative theology following the pioneering The Life of Moses by Saint Gregory of Nyssa.

The threefold way has been notably influential among spiritual writers.

The threefold way undergirds Saint Bonaventure’s The Life of Saint Francis, for example, where Saint Francis of Assisi’s life is described according to virtues corresponding to the three stages of purification, illumination, and union, culminating in the intimate identification of Saint Francis with the crucified Jesus, shown forth by the charism of the sacred stigmata.

Dominican Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange’s Three Ages of the Interior Life is also based on the threefold way. He uses the threefold way as a framework to synthesize theological principles of the spiritual life according to the rich Roman Catholic tradition.

Mount Kanchenjunga, view from India

The Mountain

Another image of progress in the spiritual life is that of the mountain. This image of the spiritual life is very apt. Because God is transcendent, ruling over all creation, the soul must ascend, literally and metaphorically, to encounter God.

In the Bible, Mount Hebron, Mount Sinai, and Mount Tabor are all important symbols. They invoke the ascent to God, who is essentially unapproachable.

Sixteenth-century mystic Saint John of the Cross describes the spiritual life as the ascent of Mount Carmel. He assumes the threefold division of souls into beginners, proficients, and the perfect—a scheme which originates in the Carthusian Hugh of Balma—and uses the framework of scholastic theology throughout, bringing together important threads in Neoplatonism and Aristotelianism to accomplish a synthesis notable in the history of mystical theology.

Saint John of the Cross begins The Ascent to Mount Carmel by establishing a theme:

The following stanzas include all the doctrine I intend to discuss in this book, The Ascent to Mount Carmel. They describe the way that leads to the summit of the mount—that high state of perfection we here call union of a soul with God. Since these stanzas will serve as the basis for all I shall say, I want to cite them here in full that the reader may see in them a summary of the doctrine to be expounded. [4]

He presents his poem describing the passage of the soul through the “dark night” of the purification of sense and spirit, arriving at the ecstatic union of love with God.

One dark night,

fired with love's urgent longings

—ah, the sheer grace!—

I went out unseen,

my house being now all stilled. [5]

The famous poem, The Dark Night of the Soul, eight stanzas long, is the basis for the exposition of The Ascent, which remains unfinished.

Walls of Avila, Spain

The Interior Castle

Saint John of the Cross’ spiritual confrere, Saint Teresa of Avila, in contrast, invokes the image of an interior castle. It maps out a journey not upward, but inward.

The image of an interior dwelling-place has antecedents, for example, the inner cell of the heart of Saint Catherine of Siena. However, Saint Teresa uniquely employs the metaphor of an interior castle in a highly developed manner. Her account is based on the extraordinary fullness of her mystical experience, so that her book has no precedent in the spiritual literature.

In the first chapter of The Interior Castle, Saint Teresa exclaims:

Today while beseeching our Lord to speak for me because I wasn’t able to think of anything to say nor did I know how to begin to carry out this obedience, there came to my mind what I shall now speak about, that which will provide us with a basis to begin with. It is that we consider soul to be like a castle made entirely out of a diamond or of very clear crystal, in which there are many rooms, just as in heaven there are many dwelling places. [6]

She continues: “Well, let us consider that this castle has, as I said, many dwelling places: some up above, others down below, others to the sides; and in the center and middle is the main dwelling place where the very secret exchanges between God and the soul take place.” [7]

The way inside the castle, she explains, is through prayer: “Insofar as I can understand the door of entry to this castle is prayer and reflection.” [8]

California desert oasis

The Desert

In all images—the ladder, the threefold way, the mountain, or the interior castle—the spiritual journey is always conceived as a progression and often as an ascent, so that some charting of progress in the spiritual life is inevitably entailed.

An alternative image of the spiritual life is suggested by the journey of Elijah the prophet to Mount Horeb when he fled from the murderous Jezebel.

Mortally afraid, Elijah flees a day’s journey into the desert until, overwhelmed by exhaustion, he lays himself down beneath a broom tree, praying, “This is enough, O Lord! Take my life, for I am no better than my fathers.” Roused by an angel from sleep, he is refreshed by a hearth cake and a jug of water. Descending into sleep a second time, he is awakened by the angel, who exclaims, “Get up and eat, else the journey will be too long for you!” Afterwards, so fortified is he that at once he walks forty days and forty nights to Mount Horeb. (1 Kings 19:1-8)

In this image of the desert the traveller is preoccupied not with their progress upward or inward but with advancing in love toward their destination, often in darkness and struggle, but also as God wills resting in oases of light and peace.

The image offers the advantage that it is a spur to prayer and ascetical practice yet at the same time a check upon self-conscious introspection or prideful dwelling upon “spiritual progress.”

The image of a journey across a flat desert combines the images of the dark night of the soul of Saint John of the Cross and the desert oasis of Saint Bruno the Carthusian.

The dark night of the soul is a desert because it is a period of purification of the senses and the spirit—painful, mysterious, yet despite it all, ardent. Saint John of the Cross says it cannot be adequately described:

So numerous and burdensome are the pains of this night, and so many are the scriptural passages we could cite that we would have neither the time nor the energy to put it all in writing; and, doubtless, all that we can possibly say would fall short of expressing what this night really is. [9]

Saint John compares it to a “dark dungeon” where a prisoner, “bound hands and feet,” is “able neither to move nor see nor feel any favor from heaven or earth.” The soul in this condition is “humbled, softened, and purified, until it becomes so delicate, simple, and refined that it can be one with the Spirit of God, according to the degree of union of love that God, in his mercy, desires to grant.” [10]

Souls who endure this suffering “know that they love God and that they would give a thousand lives for him (they would indeed, for souls undergoing these trials love God very earnestly)” yet “they find no relief. This knowledge instead causes them deeper affliction.” [11]

In contrast, the desert oasis is the foretaste of the fruits of Paradise, the vision of God in purity of heart that for reasons entirely hidden to the soul and out of sheer gratuitousness God wishes to bestow upon the soul.

Saint Bruno’s letter to his friend, Raoul, offers us glimpses of this rarefied spiritual attainment. He writes, “In any case only those who have experienced them can know the benefits and divine exultation that the solitude and silence of the desert hold in store for those who love it.” They “enter into themselves,” “rest in quiet activity,” “eat the fruits of Paradise with joy,” even “see God himself.” [12]

Of this divine exultation, Saint John speaks as well.

There are intervals in which, through God's dispensation…the soul, like one who has been unshackled and released from a dungeon and who can enjoy the benefit of spaciousness and freedom, experiences great sweetness of peace and loving friendship with God in a ready abundance of spiritual communication. [13]

Thus the spiritual journey may be conceived and understood as a trek across the flats of Elijah’s desert.

Elijah Taken Up in a Chariot of Fire (c. 1740-55) by Giuseppe Angeli

Notes

[1] Rule of Saint Benedict, Chapter 7, retrieved on April 2, 2017 from http://www.osb.org/rb/show.asp?month=1&day=25&toMonth=1&toDay=1

[2] Guigo II, The Ladder of Monks, retrieved on April 2, 2017 from http://www.soulshepherding.org/2011/08/guigos-ladder-of-monks/

[3] Pseudo-Dionysius, “The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy,” 5, in Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, translation by Colm Luibheid, foreword, notes, and translation collaboration by Paul Rorem, preface by Rene Roques, introductions by Jaroslav Pelikan, Jean Leclercq, and Karlfield Froelich (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), pp. 235-37.

[4] Saint John of the Cross, “The Ascent of Mount Carmel, Theme,” in The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, translated by Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D. and Otilio Rodriguez, O.C.D. (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1991), p. 113.

[5] Saint John of the Cross, “The Ascent of Mount Carmel, Stanzas,” op. cit., p. 113.

[6] Saint Teresa of Avila, “The Interior Castle,” I, 1 in The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, Volume II, translated by Otilio Rodriguez, O.C.D. and Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D. (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1980), p. 283.

[7] Ibid., p. 284.

[8] Ibid., p. 286.

[9] Saint John of the Cross, “The Dark Night of the Soul,” II, 7, op. cit., p. 406.

[10] Ibid., pp. 407-408.

[11] Ibid., p. 409.

[12] Saint Bruno the Carthusian, Letter to Raoul, Dean of the Cathedral Chapter at Rheims, 7, retrieved on April 2, 2017 from http://www.chartreux.org/en/texts/bruno-raoul-le-verd.php

[13] Saint John of the Cross, op. cit., p. 408.

Originally published in Catholic Exchange (June 19, 2017)

A Theory of Poetry

A THEORY OF POETRY

This first poem, Painting, seeks to express a philosophy of poetic composition:

PAINTING

Let us paint the hours of the day.

Morning is swimming pool blue

Tinctured with blown ash,

Pink gloaming

Touched by wisps of smoke;

Noon, phosphorus exploding

Blindingly, silently;

Dusk, iron oxides

Diverse as vegetables;

Night, plush sable,

Milky white, the moon.

Each word is pigment squeezed from a tube

Onto a palette of infinite possibilities.

Meaning would be unremembered

But for a picture.

Experience is meaningless

But for a symbol.

Deft brushstrokes write freshly.

Words are left to dry.

Among the particular attractions of poetry is its special capacity to create a unified experience or image so that the poem achieves an iconic or symbolic quality.

This iconic or symbolic quality is achieved in part because poetry is laconic, spare, and sometimes minimalist. In a poem, every word matters.

Often as well poetry is focused on communicating a unified experience or on constructing an image. In this respect, a poem possesses a likeness to an icon or a symbol.

Poems as icons or symbols function as the vehicle for a larger meaning beyond the poem itself.

The poem Painting invokes this iconic or symbolic function of poetry:

Meaning would be unremembered

But for a picture.

Experience is meaningless

But for a symbol.

Moreover, the poem relates poetry as icon or symbol to the dependence of human cognition on the image or symbol. Human understanding—unless we are speaking of pure intuition or mystical experience—is mediated by the image or symbol.

Consequently, one of the purposes of poetry, according to the philosophy of composition set forth in the poem Painting, is to create an icon or symbol that stands for a meaning larger than the poem itself.

Crowsnest Mountain

The following two poems, for example, attempt to realize this philosophy. The Mountain and The River are intended to be iconic and symbolic. (In order to sidestep copyright issues, I selected my own poems to illustrate my ideas.)

THE MOUNTAIN

           

Climbing is like lifting a weight, hand over hand, using a pulley. Marathoner in a trance, you ascend rapidly as time slows to near motionlessness.

Trees rustle, rice husks pushing back and forth to dry. Desiccated brush, smallish bundles, tumble downward, roll about. Bamboo thickets, agitated brooms, shiver.

Dislodged by your feet, tiny stones hurtle, soaring arcs increasing in velocity downhill, click-clacking glass marbles knocking together, gradually fading, scattering into silence.

At this height air is rarefied fire. Atop the mountain birds hover overhead, transfixed by the sun more brilliant than a sorcerer’s spell, flanked by clouds, bright balls of electricity.

Strong gusts sand your face roughly, a stone. The wind is cold, the eye of an ascetic just returned from a visit to the dead, fiercely gazing, an eagle clutching a small animal.

The vast plain below mirrors the sky, wet paddies flashing crystal polygons, jewelry turning side to side. Far into the distance, short hills squat, huge emerald droplets, whilst the river, a glittering bracelet, empties into an ocean of light.

Breathless, you are a broken wheel on the wayside. You will climb the mountain again, spellbound by the expenditure of controlled energy, delighted by the sting of sharp gravel underfoot.

The title, “The Mountain,” signals the symbolic character of the poem, insofar as the mountain is a major symbol in world culture. Mountains are Judaeo-Christian symbols of the spiritual journey, for example; Mount Sinai, Mount Horeb, and Mount Thabor are all sacred sites of Judaism, Christianity, or both. Biblically, they are places of encounter with the Divinity.

Similarly, recurring throughout the Cold Mountain poems of China is a preoccupation with natural beauty, of which the poet’s description of his experience of the vistas of Cold Mountain, traversed by Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist streams, is an allegory, understated, of the spiritual journey.

The central motif in The Mountain is emphasized in two ways particularly. First, the poem narrates the ascent up a mountain, thereby extending the poet’s account. Second, the poem dwells on the ascent using vividly descriptive details—“agitated brooms,” “bright balls of electricity,” “huge emerald droplets.”

Simplicity heightens the dominant motif. Undistracted by sub-plots or digression, the story of the ascent manifests the Aristotelian unities of time, place, and action (not that the unities are required).

Readily, we perceive in the ascent a metaphor for a universal human experience, that of the journey toward a goal, not always spiritual, at least in part often so, always involving some degree of difficulty and notable expenditure of effort, blessed with success, sometimes. This journey recurs throughout life: “You will climb the mountain again.”

Woonasquatucket River

When I wrote The River (below), I had in mind a symbol of the world in time. (The reader will no doubt interpret the poem differently.)

THE RIVER

Yesterday the river was lapping at my feet like an old man tapping out a message about time flowing downward from hills remote as hawks.

Today he rises slowly, a momentous pulse pushing seaward, fed by faraway pistons.

At the waterside where air is fresh as a pear, a sweet mist glides forward like a perfumed wrist.

Islands of floating plants drift, joining into continents, rearranging in serpentine tattoos.

Beneath the surface glittery like so many exploding firecrackers, fish swirl, shadowy limbs of an athlete smoothly cutting back and forth.

Denizens gather at the riverbanks in spoonfuls, sprinkling laughter farther than droplets shot from spinning umbrellas.

Distantly a lizard pokes its head into the sun, jerking left and right, vainly divining a future obscured by brightness.

Similar to The Mountain, The River dwells on a motif salient in world culture. Many great civilizations originated along fertile riverbanks—Indian along the Indus and Ganges, Chinese along the Yellow and Yangtze, Sumerian along the Tigris and Euphrates, Egyptian along the Nile, or Roman along the Tiber—so that rivers naturally invoke mythic attributes. The river in the poem is a symbol.

The River narrative is far more diminished than that of The Mountain. For a brief, ostensibly uninterrupted period of time, the poet describes his visual panorama of the river, almost magical in its unreality.

The River, like The Mountain, dwells on drawn out, vividly descriptive details in order to highlight the central motif, the river—“air is fresh as a pear,” “serpentine tattoos,” “so many exploding firecrackers.”

Implied in the first and last lines is the river as a metaphor for flowing time. The first line says that yesterday the river was lapping like “time flowing downward,” that is, from the past. The last line describes a lizard jerking to and fro, unsuccessfully attempting to divine the future.

Thank you, reader, for sharing my poems and my ideas about poetry. 

Originally published in IthacaLit (September 27, 2014)