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December 12, 2011
To
more fully understand presence we must engage in what is for us
a very difficult practice: to opt more for being than for
doing. St. Thomas Aquinas states this priority succinctly:
“The most marvelous thing of all things a being can do is: to
be.” Of course “doing’ is also a part of life, and the point of
being cannot be to eliminate activity and involvement from
life. Rather, what we must learn is the gentle art of
being-with whatever we are doing.
The opening
paragraph of Adrian van Kaam’s On Being Involved
provides a classic description of this stance:
On the way toward living a spiritual life, I
become aware of the relevance of really being with whatever I am
doing. To be wholeheartedly with people, nature and my task
fosters spiritual growth. Not to be there means that I grow
less or not at all. If I am serenely committed to the task God
gives to me to do or to the person he allows me to meet, it
matters little what engages me. Even the simplest task assumes
a new dimension, a deeper significance. Regardless of its
simplicity, each event becomes an encounter with reality, with
all being, with the Lord himself.
In this paragraph we discover three key
points concerning the nature of presence. First, presence
fosters spiritual growth. To withhold presence or to fail to be
with people, nature or my task diminishes our potential to
flourish as human. Second, what engages me is less of an issue
than how I am present to the person or task before me.
When we are serenely committed to our task, writes van Kaam,
“even the simplest task assumes a new dimension, a deeper
significance.” This insight suggests that meaning comes from
the value we place on being present. And third, everything is
capable of lighting up for us when we are really there. The
simplest events in life, the most ordinary aspects of reality,
“become an encounter with reality, with all being, with the Lord
himself.”
We are called to
be, to give priority to spiritual presence, but as experience
teaches, it is easy to override the summons to be. Social
pressures may cause us to lose contact with this inner call to
original presence. Ambitiousness may cloud sincere aspirations
for deeper, satisfying presence in the world. Personal
emotional vulnerabilities may complicate our best efforts to
practice simple and loving presence. Our life situation, habits
and personal woundedness also play a part in the difficulties we
encounter when we strive to become fully present.
The story of our
desire for presence and the anxiety that may accompany the
practice of presence are bound up with the story of our wounded
presence. In scripture, the Book of Tobit reminds us to
Take courage!
God has healing in store for you.
so take courage!
The word courage is repeated, but
the operative word is healing. God has healing in mind
for us. Healing applies to us personally and communally. In
terms of human presence, God’s intention, and promise, is to
heal the wounded and limited presence that we are.
When we hear the
term presence, three not clearly differentiated senses may come
to mind. As believers the word presence triggers our sense of
the presence of the holy, of sacred presence. When we
speak of The Presence, we think of God, of the ultimate
reality of spiritual presence. Being present also
connotes our ability to be present to reality rather than
diffused, abstracted or dissociated from reality. Here, the
emphasis is on self-presence: we are brought to a level of
awareness of ourselves as present or absent, of our aliveness to
and in the present moment. Ludwig Wittgenstein reminds us (as
presumably he hoped to remind himself): “All that is real is
the experience of the present moment.” Finally, the phrase
on being present suggests a capacity for presence to
others, or to reality in general.
We shall consider
these three senses of presence more fully in our next
reflection.
