The Calm Below the Storm

The Calm Below the Storm

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas

August 10, 2014; 9 Pentecost, Proper 14, Year A, Track 2

Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Matthew 14:22-33)  Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, "It is a ghost!" And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, "Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid."

Peter answered him, "Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water." He said, "Come." So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, "Lord, save me!" Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, "You of little faith, why did you doubt?" When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, "Truly you are the Son of God."

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St. Paul tells us today, You don't have to ascend into heaven or descend into the abyss to be in God's presence, "The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart."

Elijah, fearing for his life and hiding in a cave, experiences "a sound of sheer silence," and Elijah knows himself to be in the presence of the LORD.

After a full day of work that including the feeding of 5,000, Jesus "went up the mountain by himself to pray." When he finishes praying, he can walk across the storm.

"It hurt even to wake up in the morning."[i] That's how theologian Martin Laird begins the true story of Josh, who "looked fine, but emotionally was black and blue." Josh's depression robbed him of sleep. In the morning, "it took him twenty or thirty minutes to peel his blank stare off the wall and get off the edge of the bed. Shaving could take another half hour. [Yet] it took several years for depression's clamp to tighten its grip enough to make Josh want to see his doctor. The doctor recommended medication and then asked him, 'Have you ever thought of meditation?'"

Years before Josh had a solid practice –sitting still for a half hour, silently repeating the Jesus Prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." But as happens sometimes, after a few months "his initial enthusiasm went flat. Josh replaced his regular praying of the Jesus Prayer with the TV remote; he would flip obsessively through countless satellite channels, blinking bleary-eyed at all the television programs he didn't really want to watch, yet halfhoping that the very next program would give him some sense of being alive. So he flipped around and around TV channels. Meanwhile his contemplative practice fell down somewhere behind the sofa and remained there a few years."

But he took his doctor's advice and returned to his Jesus prayer practice. A few months later, something happened. "'The Jesus Prayer quickly led me back to the monotony that had defeated me some years ago. But I stayed with it this time. One night I fell asleep praying the Jesus Prayer, then, when I awoke in the middle of the night as I usually do, I felt a cleansing warmth welling up within me. The name, 'Jesus' was a living presence streaming within me. Something inside started being freed up and I started to weep in this cleansing warmth and compassion. I wept much of the night and awoke in the morning still praying the Jesus Prayer. For the first time in many months I awoke with no anxiety but instead a reverent joy. When I went downstairs for breakfast, my sister had come over. She said, 'What's wrong with you? You look happy.' That was the first and last time anything 'spiritual' happened like that, but I'm more or less faithful to the periods of praying the Jesus Prayer. Even if there are no more experiences like this one, there is still something deeply attractive that keeps drawing me back, a sense of being just on the verge of finding life again."

It still took Josh "quite some time for medication and meditation to mop up the kicked-over bucket of a decade's despair," but Josh had found the word near to him, on his lips and in his heart, in the sound of sheer silence that is God's presence beneath his contemplative prayer.

Josh started to see dimly the trail of negative thinking that created and fed his depression. Here's some of the thinking that he began to notice.

Josh had a number of devoted friends, but inside his mind he thought he was disliked by everyone. He had these "running commentaries" in his head. If people were nice to him, a reflex commentary would whisper, They're just being nice. They don't really like me. If ever there was a conflict or a misunderstanding and Josh thought someone was angry or frustrated with him, the commentary would tell him, They're never going to speak to me again.

"By far the most crippling and subtle thought that shaped much of his lifestyle and demeanor was the thought that he didn't count. Part of that came from being a middle child" between a gifted older sibling and a younger sibling born with spina bifida. "All the family dynamics focused either on his older sibling's brilliant successes or on his younger sibling's unquestionable needs." Josh felt invisible. "He said, 'I feel cut off from people, from God, from everything, like I'm living inside a sealed envelope.' He said he knew something was wrong when he was reading the words of the Carmelite author Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity, on accepting God's love: 'Let yourself be loved.' He said, 'I knew her words were meant for me, but I felt absolutely nothing.'"

As Josh practiced his contemplative prayer, an inner calm slowly came to him, letting him see into his mind. The ancient spiritual guides say that the mind is like the ocean. St. Diadochos writes, "When the sea is calm, fishermen can scan its depths and therefore hardly any creature moving in the water escapes their notice. But when the sea is disturbed by the winds it hides beneath its turbid and agitated waves what it was happy to reveal when it was smiling and calm; and then the fisherman's skill and cunning prove vain."

For Josh, contemplative prayer calmed his mind enough for him to "see the thoughts and thought-clusters that maintained [his] low mood and low energy. Being able to see the thoughts and thought-clusters in tern helped loosen the grip of depression…

"He could now see how certain thoughts would cluster together: the feeling that he did not matter to anyone caused him to withdraw, which caused him in turn to feel isolated. Feeling isolated, he lost interest in life. A depressed mood moved in on the heels of this train of thought and became a permanent resident."

In the dim light of awareness opened by his prayer, "Josh eventually became able to observe thoughts as they rise and fall. Instead of getting caught up in reactive commentary on the fact that depression is present, he can look right into the depression and say, 'Oh, look, I'm blaming again; or 'There's the thought, "Nobody likes me"'; or 'Look at how I run myself down before anyone else gets the opportunity.' Like a spider on its web, Josh is aware of anything that lands in the silk-spun web of awareness. This gets Josh out of a reactive mode and into a receptive mode of meeting inner conflict. Once Josh allows depression to be present, instead of resenting or panicking in the presence of depression, he can live in peace with the fact that depression is present, without feeling a need to comment that it should be gone if it does not happen to be gone. Josh became aware that there was something within that is untouched by depression.

"Josh had no further spiritual breakthroughs, but he still has many decades before him. While his depression has never cleared up entirely, his life definitely has more vitality and joy."

At the center of your being, you are always one with God. Below the storm of your thoughts and circumstances, God's divine presence dwells with you. Practice moving your attention from your outward circumstances and from your inward commentaries into the vast, compassionate presence which brings life and light from within. In the sound of sheer silence, the word is very near you, on your lips and in your heart. With your hand in Christ's, you too can stand still in the storm.

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[i] Martin Laird, A Sunlit Absence, Oxford U. Press, 2011. The quotes in this sermon come from chapter six, Creative Disintegration: Depression, Panic, and Awareness. Highly recommended book, along with his volume one, Into the Silent Land, A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation.