By William Johnston

Published by Fount Paperbacks, 1989.

166pp plus index

The Christian tradition is rich with letters from an elder to a
younger in the faith: Luke and Theophilus; Paul and Timothy; the author
of The Cloud of Unknowing to an unnamed young contemplative; and
Walter Hilton to a young anchoress. Following in this tradition, we
have William Johnston’s letter to Thomas in Being in
Love.

Thomas has asked Johnston to write to him about the art of prayer and
Johnston obliges by providing answers not only for Thomas’s
personal life but for the direction of others in the centre he is
establishing.

For those involved deeply in a life of prayer, particularly
contemplative prayer, Being in Love is a practical handbook. It
is a particularly valuable handbook because not only does it describe
the practice of contemplative prayer – there are lots of resources
on this topic – it describes, in contemporary terms, what happens
to the person.

Christians have relied heavily on The Lord’s Prayer which Jesus
gave in answer to His disciples asking Him to teach them how to pray. A
reading of the gospels tells us that there was much more to the prayer
life of Jesus than the words He gave to us.

We know that His prayer life was solitary and that he encouraged our
prayer life to be so. He sought places and times which would ensure his
solitariness. His prayer time was not brief. He took time to pray. At
the beginning of his ministry, he set apart six weeks for solitary
prayer. We are not to prattle, He taught us. By His words, we have The
Lord’s Prayer. By his actions, we have the prayer life of a
contemplative – a contemplative in the midst of people and
activity.

The title of Johnston’s book comes from the Canadian theologian,
Bernard Lonergan. "Religious experience", Lonergan writes,
"at its roots is experience of an unconditional and unrestricted
being in love. But what we are in love with remains something that we
have to find out."

Johnston points out that the difference between religious meditation
and secular meditation (how confusing the word "meditation"
has become in the modern context) is the dimension of love. Johnston
goes on to say

This is a love
that springs from the depths of the spirit, from the fine point or
centre of the soul, from the core of the being where men and women are
most truly themselves. It is not perfect love (for perfect love does
not exist in our fallen world) but an ongoing, open-ended love that
knows no limits. Just as the human mind has an infinite capacity for
asking questions, so the human heart has an infinite capacity for love.
Love can go on and on and on, "but what we are in love with remains
something that we have to find out".

Johnston goes on to draw a distinction between essential and
existential prayer. Essential prayer is that which deals with essences
– deals with "what God is and what I am".
This form of prayer is a reflection on God’s attributes or
scripture or a favourite prayer or one’s own words.

Existential prayer is the prayer of just being. This form of prayer
has few or no words. It has few or no images. Johnston describes this
as "I just am – like the flowers of the field or the
birds of the air; and by just being I give glory to God". From
this we are drawn from what God is to that God is; not
what I am but that I am.

Johnston emphasises the need to centre, to remain at the scintilla
animae, the sovereign point of the spirit. "Return to your
centre", he writes, "and remain there, not only during your
prayer but during your whole day. You will find that as you rest at the
centre your whole being is unified in love."

Now for those who have not entered the realms of the contemplative
tradition, this is heady stuff. Confusing messages and images come to
us about meditation from Eastern traditions and New Age enthusiasts
which are difficult to sift through without a knowledge of the Christian
mystical tradition. This leads some to condemn through ignorance. To
make the mind a blank is to invite the devil is the mindset of some.

Johnston deals with these types of misunderstandings when he
writes

I emphasize the
inner movement of love because some people who dabble in mysticism think
that to enter mystical contemplation one simply blots out all thinking
and all images, makes the mind a blank, becomes totally passive and
turns into a zombie. This, of course, is nonsense. The Christian
tradition states unequivocally that you may only enter imageless silence
when the flame of love or the sense of loving presence are alive in your
heart; that is to say, when the naked intent of the will is stretching
out towards God.

The point,
quite simply, is that the frequently practised discipline of
contemplative prayer brings forth a rich interior life, a life remote
from the state of a zombie. The call to contemplative prayer, the life
enriched by it, is based on and comes forth from love.

Johnston deals with the problems – the theological dangers, the
events of one’s own life. He deals with quietism, the ego,
discernment, the body, critical periods of life. All from the
perspective of one who is himself on the journey. Johnston draws on his
experience of Zen gained through years of living, studying and teaching
in Japan to enrich insights of the Christian tradition. Johnston is
always clear and orthodox on the Christian message, the goal of
contemplative prayer and, finally, its outworking in the life of the
believer.

Those who remember an earlier Johnston work, Silent Music,
will not be surprised to find that his last chapter is on social
consciousness. In Silent Music, Johnston contrasted Zen with
Christian mysticism and illustrated them – Zen as a perfect but
closed circle, Christian mysticism as a broken circle. The broken
circle illustrates the Christian tradition of finally leaving the place
of prayer and going to the marketplace. This after all was the command
of Jesus – love God, love neighbour.