Easter Renewal

Essay published in Spirituality magazine, March/April 2015.

The gloriously scented bluebell

Easter is probably my favourite liturgical time of the year. At some point many years ago, I realised that a wonderful sense of wellbeing and enthusiasm comes over me at this time of year. It is also matched by the warming springtime, longer days, daffodils and bluebells. This sense of wellbeing arrives at Easter, and follows on from a quieter Lenten time of inner transformation and prayerfulness.

I do not think I have ever seen anything more beautiful than the bluebell I have been looking at. I know the beauty of our Lord by it.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Lent has traditionally been a time of prayer, fasting and helping others (almsgiving), when we engage in a period of renewal, and try in our own way to echo the 40 days our Lord spent in the wilderness, praying, fasting, and being tempted. It culminates at Easter when we take time to meditate on His Passion, and to celebrate His Resurrection.


It is a time of cleansing and sacrifice, of doing without unnecessary luxuries and of consciously trying to give up unhealthy habits and behaviours. Some people decide to give up something specific such as smoking, alcohol, chocolate or sugar, or at least to limit their levels of consumption. Others look towards their actions and try to give up bad habits, negative attitudes, unhelpful thinking or other limiting behaviours. Still others decide to take up a positive habit for Lent – getting more exercise, eating well, helping others, showing random acts of kindness, or offering their time to volunteer at a local organisation.


What I noticed about this season is that even if we find ourselves too busy or too stressed or for any reason unable or uninterested to engage consciously with this renewal, the renewal seems to happen anyway, albeit with probably a little more resistance from ourselves. Life energy is renewing itself, and we all benefit. God, as Life, is emptying us out, clearing out the cobwebs, and preparing for a freshness in our direction, in our thinking, and in our lives. It prepares us for a new beginning. It is an internal time, a time of releasing old and unwanted habits. We are being renewed from within.


This inner renewal can be far from easy. It can be a time of intense frustration, where nothing goes according to plan, and obstacles appear around every corner. It is a time of following, rather than leading. It is a time of sensitivity, of recognising our limitations, our flaws and our compulsions. We can gain great self-awareness during this time, and become wise to our tendencies and habitual reactivity to life. We can also become weary and despairing. This weariness is a good thing, as it makes us reluctantly accept and admit our limitations. Through an inner consent and surrender, we are then more open to welcoming God’s Way into our lives and circumstances.


Fasting has been a tradition in many cultures and religions throughout the centuries, cleansing the body, clarifying the mind, and renewing our spirit. Apart from food, the act of going without can mean abstaining from overindulging in work life, sport, TV, computers, tablets, Facebook and other technology. It can also mean noticing and trying to balance or curb our emotional responses at work and with loved ones, such as losing our patience, getting angry, or falling into despair.


The difficulties we may experience during Lent humble us and make us more aware of our weaknesses and imbalances. Through perseverance and prayer, we are echoing the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness, his prayers to his Father, and his overcoming of the temptations in the desert. We can often feel that parts of us are dying off at this time of year. It is the dying off of the old stale parts of us. It stirs a desire in us for the purity and simplicity of God’s love. It awakens in us a desire for prayer and devotion. We gain patience for the weaknesses of others. We may even find it easier to help others at this time. Through sacrifice, our internal needs are simplified.


By Easter, there is a great forward thrust in life, in nature and within ourselves. The darkness of winter gives way to the light of spring. The land becomes warm, crops are sown and vegetables are planted for the seasons ahead. We notice the quality of light changing, the length of our day, and daylight saving heralds a burst of evening light and activity. We feel back to our old selves, but better, because humility stays with us, and we remain sensitive to others needs. We are more generous with our desires. We want something, but because it benefits more than just ourselves. This season surrounds us with a sense of holiness and goodwill and acceptance of self, others and our circumstances. We are blessed and renewed.

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Contemplation - A Definition



Nature as Contemplation

The word Contemplation holds a number of definitions in everyday usage:

• The action of looking thoughtfully at something for a long time. Synonyms: regarding, examination, inspection, observation, scrutiny.
• Deep reflective thought. Synonyms: thought, meditation, consideration, pondering, reflection.
• Religious meditation.

From a spiritual perspective, here is a helpful definition for Contemplation:

• A state of mystical awareness of God’s being (Merriam - Webster). A form of prayer or meditation in which a person seeks to pass beyond mental images and concepts to a direct experience of the divine.

It is awakening, enlightenment and the amazing intuitive grasp by which love gains certitude of God's creative and dynamic intervention in our daily life....It is the experience of "I Am."

 From: New Seeds of Contemplation

Today is the anniversary of Thomas Merton who died accidentally in 1968. He remains one of the foremost modern writers on Contemplation, and is considered by many to have beautifully and accurately captured in his writings the nature of Contemplation and the Contemplative Spirit of the ancient saints and mystics. He was primarily experiential in his writing, and it proves timeless in its essence:


Contemplation is not and cannot be a function of the external self.

Contemplation is not prayerfulness.
It is not the contemplation of abstract ideas.
It is not something to which we can attain alone, by intellectual effort, by performing our natural powers. It is not the fruit of our own efforts.
It is not a kind of self-hypnosis, resulting from concentration on our own inner spiritual being.

From: New Seeds of Contemplation

Contemplation seems to involve a continual inner "consent" whereby we offer to yield internally to the call to be transformed, to allow and trust the process of life. This inner "Yes" does not happen easily, and often goes against our instinctual nature to do it ourselves, to put into action all that we wish to exist for ourselves, to initiate change, to try and find happiness.

Most people find they reach some form of spiritual crisis or opening when they experience deep pain, or indeed deep love. Life presents us with Illness, Grief, War, Poverty, Famine, Relationships, Stress, Depression, Fatigue, the Joy in the much longed-for birth of a child, a Wedding Day, the deep companionship of a friend/partner who accompanies you through a season of change. All of these experiences can trigger deep Contemplation. Somehow, it is possible to emerge from these sometimes overwhelming seasons, utterly changed within, knowing we have been shown kindness, love, understanding, patience. Love itself accompanied us during these seasons, and we consented, albeit reluctantly initially.

Contemplative experiences, to me, are not designed to support a superficial external world, but instead pull us inside, they insist on stripping us of our self-reliance and independence, our external self, and lead us into our deepest places of weakness and vulnerability. We can even realise that we didn't volunteer for this. Yes, we may have prayed for happiness and ease in our lives, for protection for ourselves and our loved ones, for good health, for meaningful relationships, for purpose and meaning, for fulfilment, but we never imagined these might come through defeat, through utter helplessness, through despair, and even through joy, or miraculous breakthroughs.


... the deep, inexpressible certitude of the contemplative experience awakens a tragic anguish and opens many questions in the depths of the heart like wounds that cannot stop bleeding...This torment is a kind of trial by fire in which we are compelled, by the very light of invisible truth which has reached us in the dark ray of contemplation, to examine, to doubt and finally to reject all the prejudices and conventions that we have hitherto accepted as if they were dogmas.

From: New Seeds of Contemplation

Intuition, and finally certainty of what is not true paves the way for the certainty of what is. In letting go, wisdom grows. The experience of the impact of divinity grows. Such contemplative experiences have confirmed to the degree of unshakeable certainty that Life, that Love, that God is present in them. These experiences build certainty that whatever comes our way each day is an external happening. We steadily become more planted inside.

For the contemplative and spiritual self, the dormant, mysterious, and hidden self that is always effaced by the activity of our exterior self does not seek fulfilment. It is content to be, and in its being it is fulfilled, because its being is rooted in God.

From: The Inner Experience

The inner self, humble and content, speaks an inner word-less language. We realise that the inner self is expanding outwards into our external experiences. It is not contrived. It is a becoming of our true nature. We realise also that those seasons are moulding and shaping us, and we know this is ultimately a good thing. What is inside, is now becoming reflected outside. Transparency and alignment build. It is not our doing. Our inner consent is a response to an inner call.

We become contemplatives when God discovers Himself in us.

From: New Seeds of Contemplation