A Mindful Experiment- read this Paul Kingsnorth poem
A Mindful Experiment- read this Paul Kingsnorth poem
In Daniel Siegel’s book The Mindful Brain the author talks about the mindful awareness induced by poetry, creating what he calls ‘a receptive presence of mind’ (p.161). By presence he says ‘I mean quite specifically the state of receptive awareness of our open minds to whatever arises as it arises’ (p.161).
Paul Kingsnorth’s poem ‘Vodadahue Mountain’ has just that impact. Follow the link to this poem, read it attentively and see what happens. Daniel Siegel argues that such poems activate the streams of awareness within us (p.162).
This poem won the 2012 Wenlock poetry prize. As I read it I had a moment of clear vision that there is, to paraphrase Luther, something important written on, trees, flowers, clouds and stars (and mountains, elephants and pumas). Something I need to track.
An eco-no to evil – the mindful tree
In ‘The Roots of Christian Mysticism’ by Olivier Clement there is a fragment of a quote from Paul Claudel talking about the art of Japanese painters. This is in a chapter entitled The Glory of God Hidden in His Creatures and the quote says ‘for them, the visible world was a perpetual allusion to Wisdom, like that great tree which, with unutterable majesty, says No to evil for us’ (p.223).
Paul Claudel apparently had a profound conversion to Catholicism at the age of 18. I can’t be sure what great tree he is talking about, but the tree that sprung to my mind was the mysterious tree ‘of the knowledge of good and evil’ (Genesis 2:17).
What struck me about what Claudel might be helping us to understand is why this mysterious tree is there in Genesis. Maybe it is called the tree of the knowlege of good and evil, to help us say No to evil – it is an eco-No. Claudel also said in La Ville, ‘A pure eye and a fixed gaze see every object becoming transparent in front of them'(p.222, Clement).
The great tree is there in Genesis to help us say No to evil, and perhaps that embodied Wisdom is in every tree. If we looked at any tree attentively enough, we might see the ‘No’ of God written in each leaf, the No to evil.
One of the great evils, therefore, is how we treat trees and the rest of Creation. The obvious example is the continued destruction of the rain forest. It seems that the eco-No was there in the beginning. Wisdom sits in the tree, and we need to notice it.
Mindful of nature – Isaac the Syrian
Isaac of Nineveh (The Syrian) of the seventh century was someone who who was mindful of nature. His purified heart, purified through contemplation of Scripture made him mindful of nature.
‘And what is a compassionate heart?..It is a heart that burns for all creation, for the birds, for the beasts, for the devils, for every creature. When he thinks about them, when he looks at them, his eyes fill with tears. So strong, so violent is his compassion….that his heart breaks when he sees the pain and the suffering of the humblest creature.’ (quoted in Olivier Clement, ‘The Roots of Christian Mysticism’, p. 227).
Christians who rediscover the ancient paths of contemplation will rediscover the possibility of seeing ‘every common bush afire with God’ (Gerard Manley Hopkins). They will rediscover a heart that burns for all creation.
A Riddle: Why is present-moment awareness so important?
Jesus was a riddler and so riddles must be important. ‘Why is present-moment awareness so important?’
As Jesus said, ‘Therefore do not worry about tomorrow..’ (Matthew 6:34)
A Riddle: Are you your thoughts and feelings?
In his brilliant book on the practice of contemplation Into The Silent Land Martin Laird (OSA) says the doorways to the present moment are guarded by three riddles. The first riddle is this: Are you your thoughts and feelings?
The earliest example of mindfulness?
The earliest example of mindfulness?
On the Granta website is an essay by Casper Henderson called ‘Barely Imagined Beings’ (Book of same name just out). In it he shows An image from the Chauvet cave paintings, which are over 30,000 years old.
It is a scene of lions about to attack. Casper quotes from David Quammen’s book (Monster of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind), who writes that the scene has been painted not with fear but ‘a skilled hand, a calm heart,and an attentive, reverential eye.’
Is this the earliest evidence for the universal human capacity for mindfulness, through mindful art?
The Mindful/Discerning Ones – a charism of the Holy Spirit?
In his book ‘Words of Spirituality’ Enzo Bianchi writes, ‘in Buddism, it is through attention that one reaches a penetrating vision of reality, a way of seeing, what the desert fathers and the Christian tradition have called diorasis (seeing in depth, beyond appearances and exteriors) (p.34).
Diorasis is one of the ‘mindful’ Christian words, and someone who exhibited it was called a Discerning One, we could say a mindful one – for discernment is part of Christian mindfulness. It is not a narrow closed attitude of the mind but an open, discerning one. In Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) a mindfulness-incorporating therapy, the state of mind to access is ‘wise mind’. Discernment is about wisdom.
In ‘The Spirituality of the Christian East’ Tomas Spidlik calls this discernment, this seeing in depth a charism of the Holy Spirit, which included an ability to see into the hearts of people. It also included a knowledge of the mysteries of God.
this charism is considered a gift of God and also the result of personal purification, through a life of contemplative prayer, ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God'(Matthew 5:8). The principal way of praying was the Jesus Prayer, the simple but profound invocation of the presence of God which contains the whole gospel, ‘Lord Jesus Christ Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.’ This prayer was incarnated into the person through the first half of the prayer happening on the in-breath, and the second half on the out-breath.
This ancient prayer enables one to deal with the traditional eight afflictive thoughts of gluttony, lust and greed, anger, sadness and acedia, vanity and pride.
The grace of God enables all to become discerning ones, the humility of man enables all to co-work with God in contemplative prayer. This is the wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Mothers.
The anxious shoal in my mind
In the sea of awareness in my mind fish swim in. Sometimes (often) one of them thinks there’s a shark in the sea outside the harbour of my head. Other fish-thoughts cluster anxiously to him.
I become that anxious shoal even though I am not that shoal, and I am bigger than that shoal of fish-thoughts. And there wasn’t even a shark in the water outside the harbour of my head.
But the shoal begins to tell the story of the shark that has got bigger, and more and more fish-thoughts gather and swim around frantically telling the untrue story about the shark that isn’t actually there.
Just in the corner of the bowl of my mind swims a little bright goldfish which taps the side of my mind and says, ‘you are bigger than these fish-thoughts and perhaps the shark isn’t actually there’. Suddenly the water calms and the shoal of fish-thoughts swim away and they have disshoalved.
More fish-thoughts swim into the harbour of my mind…the little gold Right-fish thought is still and still there.
speaking event at Somerville College Chapel Oxford
speaking event at Somerville College Chapel Oxford
I am speaking at Somerville College Oxford Chapel on Sunday 4th November at 6 p.m. on ‘Watchfulness and mindfulness: a Christian perspective’
50 shades of mindfulness
Article on Evangelical Alliance website – culture section – Friday Night Theology
shaunlambert.co.uk 