By William Johnston

Published by Fount Paperbacks, 1989.

166pp plus index

The Christian tradition is rich with letters from an elder to a younger in the faith: Luke and Theophilus; Paul and Timothy; the author of The Cloud of Unknowing to an unnamed young contemplative; and Walter Hilton to a young anchoress. Following in this tradition, we have William Johnston's letter to Thomas in Being in Love.

Thomas has asked Johnston to write to him about the art of prayer and Johnston obliges by providing answers not only for Thomas's personal life but for the direction of others in the centre he is establishing.

For those involved deeply in a life of prayer, particularly contemplative prayer, Being in Love is a practical handbook. It is a particularly valuable handbook because not only does it describe the practice of contemplative prayer - there are lots of resources on this topic - it describes, in contemporary terms, what happens to the person.

Christians have relied heavily on The Lord's Prayer which Jesus gave in answer to His disciples asking Him to teach them how to pray. A reading of the gospels tells us that there was much more to the prayer life of Jesus than the words He gave to us.

We know that His prayer life was solitary and that he encouraged our prayer life to be so. He sought places and times which would ensure his solitariness. His prayer time was not brief. He took time to pray. At the beginning of his ministry, he set apart six weeks for solitary prayer. We are not to prattle, He taught us. By His words, we have The Lord's Prayer. By his actions, we have the prayer life of a contemplative - a contemplative in the midst of people and activity.

The title of Johnston's book comes from the Canadian theologian, Bernard Lonergan. "Religious experience", Lonergan writes, "at its roots is experience of an unconditional and unrestricted being in love. But what we are in love with remains something that we have to find out."

Johnston points out that the difference between religious meditation and secular meditation (how confusing the word "meditation" has become in the modern context) is the dimension of love. Johnston goes on to say

This is a love that springs from the depths of the spirit, from the fine point or centre of the soul, from the core of the being where men and women are most truly themselves. It is not perfect love (for perfect love does not exist in our fallen world) but an ongoing, open-ended love that knows no limits. Just as the human mind has an infinite capacity for asking questions, so the human heart has an infinite capacity for love. Love can go on and on and on, "but what we are in love with remains something that we have to find out".

Johnston goes on to draw a distinction between essential and existential prayer. Essential prayer is that which deals with essences - deals with "what God is and what I am". This form of prayer is a reflection on God's attributes or scripture or a favourite prayer or one's own words.

Existential prayer is the prayer of just being. This form of prayer has few or no words. It has few or no images. Johnston describes this as "I just am - like the flowers of the field or the birds of the air; and by just being I give glory to God". From this we are drawn from what God is to that God is; not what I am but that I am.

Johnston emphasises the need to centre, to remain at the scintilla animae, the sovereign point of the spirit. "Return to your centre", he writes, "and remain there, not only during your prayer but during your whole day. You will find that as you rest at the centre your whole being is unified in love."

Now for those who have not entered the realms of the contemplative tradition, this is heady stuff. Confusing messages and images come to us about meditation from Eastern traditions and New Age enthusiasts which are difficult to sift through without a knowledge of the Christian mystical tradition. This leads some to condemn through ignorance. To make the mind a blank is to invite the devil is the mindset of some.

Johnston deals with these types of misunderstandings when he writes

I emphasize the inner movement of love because some people who dabble in mysticism think that to enter mystical contemplation one simply blots out all thinking and all images, makes the mind a blank, becomes totally passive and turns into a zombie. This, of course, is nonsense. The Christian tradition states unequivocally that you may only enter imageless silence when the flame of love or the sense of loving presence are alive in your heart; that is to say, when the naked intent of the will is stretching out towards God.

The point, quite simply, is that the frequently practised discipline of contemplative prayer brings forth a rich interior life, a life remote from the state of a zombie. The call to contemplative prayer, the life enriched by it, is based on and comes forth from love.

Johnston deals with the problems - the theological dangers, the events of one's own life. He deals with quietism, the ego, discernment, the body, critical periods of life. All from the perspective of one who is himself on the journey. Johnston draws on his experience of Zen gained through years of living, studying and teaching in Japan to enrich insights of the Christian tradition. Johnston is always clear and orthodox on the Christian message, the goal of contemplative prayer and, finally, its outworking in the life of the believer.

Those who remember an earlier Johnston work, Silent Music, will not be surprised to find that his last chapter is on social consciousness. In Silent Music, Johnston contrasted Zen with Christian mysticism and illustrated them - Zen as a perfect but closed circle, Christian mysticism as a broken circle. The broken circle illustrates the Christian tradition of finally leaving the place of prayer and going to the marketplace. This after all was the command of Jesus - love God, love neighbour.