Contemplative spirituality invites us to find God in all things. This invitation is based on the belief that God’s presence is revealed in and through the totality of our human lives. We cannot limit God’s presence to the ‘religious bits,’ to what happens in church, to times of prayer, to the celebration of the sacraments. God’s presence is manifested in our encounters with other people, in our relationships, in the inner stirring of our hearts, in art and music and nature, in our times of leisure, in our pain and struggles, in the events of our daily lives. All these things and more are sources of God’s revelations. They are the window that looks inward to God. The human life of every person is the holy ground, the sacred place, where God is met and known.
For most people recognising the ways in which God is present in their lives does not come naturally. Tuning into God’s presence is in fact an art and a discipline that needs to be cultivated. Among the things that can help us to grow in contemplative awareness let me mention three.
(1) Take time to stand and stare. Most people today are too busy to stand. Perhaps this is because they get their value from their work. A lot of the time we are in overdrive, under pressure to do, to achieve, to produce. It seems we are not allowed to be anymore. Perhaps we have lost the art of play. Play is not only for children. It is for adults too. Play is a non-productive activity. It allows us to be and to rejoice in the act of being. By taking time to stand we are free to stare. Staring is a particular way of seeing, of looking at reality. To stare is not to analyse or define reality. It is to enter into communion with reality. In the words of the late William McNamara it is to take a long loving look at the real. To be willing to take a long loving look at the real opens us to the reality of God and allows us to glimpse the God of reality.
(2) Pay greater attention to what is happening around you and within you. There is an old Portuguese proverb which says, “When God wants to hide something he places it right in front of our eyes.” Often God is staring us in the face and we do not see him! Elizabeth Browning puts this well when she says, “Earth is crammed with heaven and every common bush afire with God. But only he who sees takes off his shoes. The rest sit around it and pluck blackberries.” Perhaps we do not recognise God because we do not expect to find God in the ordinary things of life. But the truth is earth is crammed with heaven and every common bush afire with God. Believing God is in the ordinary is one thing, being attentive to the ordinary is another. Unless we are really paying attention to what is happening in our lives we are unlikely to notice the divine presence. The practice of mindfulness, widespread today, is a way of paying attention to what is happening in our lives. This art can help us to develop our capacity to recognise the presence of God in all that is real.
(3) Practice a form of prayer known as the examen or review of awareness. The examen is a form of prayer that comes from the Ignatian tradition. In practice it involves spending about ten minutes before bedtime looking back over the day in the light of the question: Where was God in my life today? Gently surveying the day with this question in mind helps us to notice the way God is working is our lives and to realise how we can in fact find God in all things. It also increases our sensitivity to the movements, often subtle, of the Holy Spirit.