Psalm Prayer, Dorothy Day by Mary Haas
The life of prayer must never be separated
from the struggles of humanity.
The spiritual life is not a way of tranquilizing oneself
against the anguish of the world.
~ Kenneth Leech
Selby1 . . . has identified a phenomenon in spirituality which manifests itself in at least two ways: the identification of spirituality and prayer with the attainment of inner tranquility and the cessation of conflict; and the identification of spiritual direction and pastoral care with the reduction of conflict and dis-ease or maladjustment. Let me then enlarge briefly on these two aspects.
The spiritual life and the experience of prayer which is its head, is often assumed to be, at least ideally, a condition marked by peace and interior calm. There is a sense in which this is so. The Christian person, the person in whom Christ lives, should be characterized by a certain inner depth of peacefulness, and should radiate that peace to others. But there is a false peace which comes not from rootedness in God but from a kind of analgesic spirituality which seeks to remove pains and conflicts both of the world and of the heart by dulling the consciousness. Marx correctly identified much religion as the opium of the people: today (1989) it would be more correct to see much spirituality as the religious equivalent to Librium and Valium. It was against such a false view of peace that the fourteenth-century Flemish mystic Ruysbroeck wrote scathingly when he spoke of ‘[persons] who practice a false vacancy.’
Ruysbroek . . . said that those who see the attainment of inner peace and tranquility as the goal of the spiritual life, and who neglect the common life and the demands of charity and justice, are the most harmful and most evil [persons] that live. For the life of prayer must never be separated from the struggles of humanity. The spiritual life is not a way of tranquilizing oneself against the anguish of the world.2
1 Peter Selby, Liberating God
2 Kenneth Leech, Spirituality and Pastoral Care, 32-33.
ARTWORK:
(Upper) Psalm Prayer – Dorothy Day by Mary Haas. Used with the artist’s permission.
Find Mary’s work here and here.
(Lower) Hambre, Oswaldo Guayasamin, (1919 -1999)
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