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Our practice of contemplation is not the avoiding of “distractions,” as was foolishly taught, but instead we use them “to look over their shoulder” for God! This was the brilliant insight of the author of the fourteenth-century book, The Cloud of Unknowing (Chapter 32). The persistence of the distraction can actually have the effect of steadying your gaze, deepening your decision, increasing your freedom, your choice, and your desire for God and for grace—over this or that passing phenomenon. The same can be true with any persistent temptation.
The “shoulders” of the distraction almost become your necessary vantage point and they create the crosshairs of your seeing. Who would have thought? It is an ideal example of how God uses everything to bring us to God. I wasted years on trying to deny, repress, or avoid distractions and “dirty” thoughts—which never worked very well. Many gave up on prayer and the spiritual life because of it.
It is not the avoidance of problems that makes you a contemplative, but a daily holding of the problem, straight on (while not letting it hold onto you)—and finding a resolution in the much deeper and more spacious “peace of Christ, which will guard your heart and your mind” (Philippians 4:7). I never knew it would take such hourly vigilance to guard my heart and my mind from anger, judgment, fear, jealousy, and negativity of any kind. Only the vast peace of Christ can do it. Now it is almost my only daily discipline, much, much harder than poverty, chastity, and obedience ever were!
Adapted from
Contemplation in Action, p. 18
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