Our local veterinarians, a serious vet service dealing with
serious cattle and sheep, have a sign up saying ‘Anxiety – Is Your Cat a Silent
Sufferer?’ My dog took offence. He said he was being discriminated against.
Poodles do talk, you know. The modern milieu, Bosy went on to
say, is a maelstrom of noise, threat, conflict and change, to which the human
response is distraction.
We add to the racket by wiring our heads for sound even when asleep,
with Musak in the supermarket, buses and planes. We expose ourselves to conflict
by watching the news and horror movies or merely reading the newspaper. We accelerate
change by consuming far too much (look at the leviathans we used to call
lorries, shifting our stuff) constantly moving house, holidaying overseas (and returning
with viruses), by reshaping our bodies with surgery, weird diets and working
out. Angst-ridden, we project our problems onto those around us, even our pets.
Imagine how much simpler life was in the third century. But Thomas
Merton tells us even then St Anthony, the
father of monks, ‘believed that to let oneself drift along, passively accepting
the tenets and values of what they knew as society, was purely and simply a
disaster.’ To escape what Henri Nouwen terms ‘the seductive compulsions of the
world’, St Anthony and his monks fled to solitude, silence and prayer. And so
can we.
I know. That sounds appalling. Because we’re victimised by a
world that demands we ‘know stuff’, ‘buy
stuff’, ‘go to things’, ‘support things’. But there’s another world, as close
as our sighs, which showcases real treasure: the kingdom of God, advertised by
Christ in parables which a cathedral newsletter I read earlier this year described
as ‘baffling’.
Baffling, maybe, for the very reason that understanding is
one of the treasures hidden in that kingdom entered by St Anthony and his monks,
and which we too are called to enter through contemplative prayer, prayer of
the heart where God dwells and Satan attacks.
‘We all have different spiritualities,’ someone said to me
recently. But authentic spiritualities must encompass the sacrifice and
detachment required by Christ in his Gospel and practised by all the saints,
which can be achieved only when as Vatican II says, ‘action is subordinated to
contemplation’. Vatican II prescribed contemplative prayer for everyone,
without exception.
It’s not rocket
science. It’s not complicated. When Nouwen asked Mother (now Saint) Teresa what
he needed to live his priestly vocation she said, ‘Spend one hour a day in
adoration of your Lord, and never do anything you know to be wrong.’ If I were
cheeky enough, I’d add that an hour a day will also show you what’s wrong and
strengthen you not to do it.
And having unburdened himself of these reflections, Bosy the
dog admonished Orlando the cat, who was sharpening his claws (anxiously?) on
the curtains, went to his pozzie in ‘im indoors’ office, sat down and closed
his eyes.
I tiptoed out and did the same.