Keep Awake! – Br. Curtis Almquist

Matthew 24:37-44

…Keep awake, for you do not now on what day your Lord is coming But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming he would have stayed awake and wound not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at un unexpected hour.

This gospel passage appointed for today begs a question: How? How does one “keep awake”? as we’ve just heard Jesus say. Jesus’ words here are one of a number of ways and times that he tells us about what is coming – what Jesus calls the coming “kingdom of God.” It will come upon us suddenly, and with surprise, and that we could miss it because we’re asleep. How does one cultivate a kind of attentiveness to God whose ways are undeniably mysterious and surprising, but whose presence (I would say) is undeniably real and recurring? How to be attentive and awake to the coming of God? ( That, by the way, is what the name of this season means: “Advent,” the coming, the coming and coming again and coming again of God.) How is God coming to you this season?

There is this ancient story of an inquirer seeking spiritual advice from their guide, “What action shall I perform to attain God?” the seeker asked. “If you wish to attain God,” came the response, “there are two things you must know. The first is that all efforts to attain God are of no avail. God will be God.” “And the second?” the seeker asked. “The second thing you must know is that you must act as if you do not know the first.” [i] I would suggest that a way into this mystery is through a kind of spiritual discipline. Our English word “discipline” comes from the Latin word for ‘learner,’ discipulus, a derivative of the verb discere ‘to learn.’ And, I would say, a key thing to learn about discipline is that authentic discipline yields liberation, not incarceration. In college, I remember my English composition teacher telling us students that it was essential for us to diligently learn the rules of grammar and syntax so that we would always know when we were bending the rules, and with intention, so as to be able to express ourselves most freely. And in music, the same. I remember my trumpet teacher drilling us on meter and scales, endlessly, not so that we could appear in concert to play beautiful scales, but so that we were in shape to play anything with energy and with confidence. And in sports, the same. The warm-ups, the weight-lifting, the other repetitions in training is to bring focus to our eyes, and agility, coordination, and tone to our muscles so that we can play our sport with delight and freedom and energy. So in all discipline, including spiritual discipline: authentic discipline is a means to an end, and authentic spiritual discipline yields an attentive freedom to be whom God has created to us to be. Authentic discipline yields liberation not incarceration.

I would say that spiritual discipline has more to do with a posture of attentive learning rather than a posture of retentive fixation on some form or formula. Now, mind you, I’m a monk, and you need only look at the schedule of our chapel services to see how many times we show up to church every day. I think showing up is a very important spiritual discipline, but the form has to be complemented by God’s ongoing work of formation: what God is giving us the ability to see and hear and savor and desire now. So that’s the first thing that comes to mind in responding to the question, “How to be awake or stay awake to God?” Attend to the question: “What is this season of your life about.” “What is the most important thing?” Is it about relationships: your relationship with someone else or with yourself; is it about your work – too much work or the too little work or the wrong mix of work; is it about letting go of something or taking on something? Is it about your world? What is it? What is the most important thing for you to attend to this season of your life? That’s important. Begin where you are. What season is this for your soul? What is now?

A second thing about wakefulness or attentiveness that comes to mind is quite counter cultural. It’s about waiting. What grows tall and strong must also grow slowly and deep, or it will tumble… Depth takes time. I would say that God has all the time in the world. Though we live in a culture and time that so highly values instant access to everything, at least in the spiritual realm it seems to me we can only bear a little at time. I find this rather modest image in the psalms so reassuring: “[God’s] word is a lantern to my feet and a light upon my path.” [ii] This sense of God’s light on our path is not that of, say, a 500,000 watt beam shining down a road­way. It’s rather the image of an oil lamp, enlightening the next step, and only the next step ahead. Is it that we are waiting on God or that God is waiting on us? I’m not sure sometimes, but I suspect it is something of a slow dance that we’re doing together. God is certainly not in a rush. The American novelist Margaret Runbeck writes, “Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling.” Consider looking at the road you’re on just now and everywhere you’re having to wait. See the scenery, which includes waitings or delays, as appreciation points that open up wonderful new vistas that you might have missed were you moving at your normal clip.

I think there’s also an invitation to wait on others. Simone Weil writes that the heart of a moral relationship to other human beings is “hesitation.” It’s a reminder to wait and listen before we impose solutions, interpretations, condemnations or whatever. “Just as in our relation with God our not knowing what to say may be what speaks most eloquently of God, so with others. The moment of hesitation, the patience of attending, shows what might be meant by believing that women and men are created in God’s image. [iii] The great English Jesuit, Cyril Martindale, wrote a century ago, “One approaches these [other] souls with, O, infinite respect, affection, slow study, self-distrust, and more than all else, prayer (because, left to oneself, one will remain a clumsy, meddlesome mischief-maker to the end of one’s days.” [iv] Waiting, living with the questions, may be how God is keeping you attentive just now. From my experience, God is more generous in giving us questions than answers. Waiting. The gift of waiting, quite counter-cultural.

Another thing that comes to mind in being attentive to God is a kind of gentle, non-condemning acknowledgment that “you are where you are.” There’s an old Buddhist koan that I find very endearing: “You cannot fall off the path.” I think it is a deadening waste of time to fixate on the past, whether it’s to be stuck on the good ‘ole days or the bad ‘old days. And, likewise, it’s a snare and delusion to be obsessed with the future, which has not yet been created. I’m not saying that the past is not to be reverenced nor the future anticipated, but I am saying that life is now, and that we live out both our memories and our dreams out of the context of now. God is now. It seems to me that forgiveness is the most important key to opening up the gift of life now: forgiveness of others, perhaps forgiveness of God (could that even be an option?), maybe forgiveness of ourselves. I would say that forgiveness is the key to reconciling us to where life is for us now. The Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister writes about reverencing where we have ended up now: “There is nothing we can lose in life that does not teach us something worth knowing. Sometimes we learn to pick our friends more carefully. Sometimes we learn not to be so committed to what the world calls “success.” Sometimes we learn that we have been about the wrong things entirely in life. But there is no such thing as failure as long as we learn something from it. It’s what the French essayist Michel de Montaigne calls “triumphant failures.” He writes, “There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.” [v]

Another thing about being attentive to God this season of your life: not to counterfeit prayer. Prayer is about relationship with God, and God is always the initiator of that relationship. Prayer is a response to God. Prayer is a gift from God. There is “common prayer,” which is the spirit in which we come together this morning; however there is also something very personal and unique about our relationship with God and the prayer that God is giving you now. I would say, if you find your own prayer or your pattern of prayer boring, then I would say, that’s probably not your prayer… If your prayer is boring, you’re probably off the mark a bit, because of all the things we may say of God with certainty, God is certainly not boring! If your prayer is [vi] Otherwise, it seems to me, what we’re prone to call our “prayer” – the motions, mantras, postures, lists, whatever – these things could actually get in the way of our authentic, ever-changing relationship with God. I’ll appeal here, once more, to the insight of Sister Joan Chittister: “It would be impossible to have spirituality without prayer, of course, but it is certainly possible to pray without having a spirituality at all.” How do you know the difference? For Sister Joan, the litmus test is, ‘Am I becoming kinder?’ That’s a good place to start. [vii] boring, maybe you’re trying to pray someone else’s prayer (or your former prayer or your future prayer) and it simply doesn’t fit now. It isn’t now. There’s a wonderful English Benedictine monk named Dom John Chapman, remembered especially because of the simple, wise spiritual letters he wrote in response to inquiries about spiritual disciplines. I recall one of his letters where he is addressing the fretfulness of a woman who is certain that her prayer isn’t good enough. One line from Dom John Chapman’s response comes to mind. He writes, gently: “Pray as you can, and do not try to pray as you can’t. Take yourself as you find yourself, and start from that.”

It seems to me that there is a season of the soul like autumn, which comes before the dead of winter. Life as we know it on this earth includes death: everything dies. Trees and seas die, mountains die, people die, relationships die, careers die. There are countless endings. It seems to me we can work to avoid or deny these inevitabilities or we can live into these inevitable deaths as part of the gift of life, as God has given it to us. There quite a wonderful word in the vocabulary of prayer called “detachment,” which is a spiritual discipline of reverencing and enjoying the gifts of life in the face and form of people and in the glory of God’s creation… Detachment is about cherishing while at the same time not about clinging or clutching at what we cannot hold on to. The great poet Mary Oliver writes:

To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go. [viii]

And then, one last thing I’ll say. This gospel passage appointed for today gives us only one picture, only one set of metaphors that Jesus uses with regards to our spiritual discipline: to be attentive by being awake. Some of you here today may need to wake up. There may be events in your life right now – very full events or very vacuous events – that God is using to speak to you or lead you. Wake up to it! For others of you, the invitation that God may be giving you now is from another side of Jesus’ personality and another side of his teaching: an invitation to rest in the peace of Christ, to savor the sampling of food that shall last forever, to drink deeply from life, to relax, to abide, to enjoy, to reincorporate the word “leisure” into your soul. There’s a story told from the desert tradition of the early church. Once upon a time the greatly revered monk, Abba Anthony, was relaxing with his disciples outside his hut when a hunter came by. The hunter was surprised and mildly shocked and rebuked Anthony for taking it easy. This was not the hunter’s idea of what a monk should be doing. But Anthony said, “Bend your bow and shoot an arrow.” And the hunter did so. “Bend it again and shoot another,” said Anthony. And the hunter did so again and again. The hunter finally said, “Abba Anthony, if I keep my bow always stretched, it will break.” “So it is with us,” replied Anthony. “If we push ourselves beyond measure we will break; it is right from time to tie to relax our efforts.” Maybe your discipline just now is to relax, from the Latin verb, relaxare, which means “to open” or “to loosen.” Perhaps for some of you, the discipline of leisure would be the most thing for you to cultivate this season.

What is the ultimate end for our lives? What is the end for which we’ve been created and around which all spiritual discipline circles? I recall those wonderful words in the Westminster Shorter Catechism: The end for which we’ve been created is to know God and to enjoy God forever.

[i] In a High Spiritual Season , by Joan Chittister, OSB. (Triumph Books, 1995), p. 63.

[ii] Psalm 119:105.

[iii] Source unknown.

[iv] C. C. Martindale, A Biography , by Philip Caraman. (Longman, 1967), p. 119.

[v] Chittister, p. 15.

[vi] Spiritual Letters , by Dom John Chapman. (Sheed and Ward, 1946), p. 109.

[vii] Chittister, p. 46.

[viii] “In Blackwater Woods” by Mary Oliver from her book, American primitive: Poems (Little, Brown, 1983).

Support SSJE


Please support the Brothers work.
The brothers of SSJE rely on the inspired kindness of friends to sustain our life and our work. We are grateful for the prayers and support provided to us.

Click here to Donate

23 Comments

  1. Jonathan Hansen on December 11, 2018 at 23:44

    Thank you for the kind words that need to heard often.

  2. Ruth West on December 8, 2018 at 14:06

    Thank you, Br. Curtis, for this super-good sermon. I have read, reread and meditated on it. How I needed it!
    I know God. I love him, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I wait for His coming. I pray that I can be kinder day by day. The sermons from you monks help to brighten my life and shed light on my path. Thanks again. REW

    • JD Hansen on December 11, 2018 at 23:40

      Thank you very much. I find this very helpful at this time..

  3. John McCausland on December 8, 2018 at 10:30

    So wise. So helpful.

  4. Billie on December 8, 2018 at 07:36

    I so needed your words at this time in my life. Thank you.

  5. Dale Pinkham Cavanaugh on December 8, 2018 at 06:43

    Thank you Brother Curtis. The loving words and inspiration you share today lift and bless me at a time when I am deeply called to keep awake but also patiently wait and work in hopeful expectation. I was particularly moved by your passage on God’s invitation to wait on other members of the human family with hesitation, affection and attentiveness as so beautifully expressed by the author Simone Weil and the Jesuit Priest Cyril Martindale. Joy and blessings to you and your Brothers during this Advent season!

  6. Claudia Booth on November 28, 2017 at 18:37

    Brother Curtis, thank you for the permission to be in the now. Now, was a concept that was in vogue in my context 40 years ago. Thank you for the value of, “now.” So sorry about the past and worried about the future, I had almost forgotten to just be in and simply relish this moment. Very important! Thanks, again.

  7. E North on November 27, 2017 at 13:55

    This psalm the brother has gifted from Mathew, reminds me of the days when I open my kitchen window and the first fragrances of Spring’s blooms enter my home, after the long rainy season.

    Ce psaume que le frère a donné à Mathew, me rappelle les jours où j’ouvre la fenêtre de ma cuisine et où les premiers parfums de la floraison Printanière entrent dans ma maison, après une saison trop pluvieuse.

  8. Marta Engdahl on November 27, 2017 at 08:01

    Great thoughts and recommendations for the beginning of Advent: to wait, to watch, and to be ready in a prayer-ful state to seek to listen to God. If you persevere, it will happen . . . .

  9. Fred Adams on December 8, 2014 at 12:54

    Such meat. Such soothing, meaningful words…words of action, yet words of peaceful waiting. Indeed, I will wait.
    Bless you, Brother.

    • Joyce McGirr on November 28, 2017 at 08:21

      Thank you for helping me in my life right now.

  10. Margaret Dungan on December 7, 2014 at 17:10

    Br. Curtis. I feel as if we had sat down together and discussed all the things that are on my mind at this time. You have shone a light into some murky corners and it has been so personal and so helpful that thank you seems too small a word.
    Margaret.

  11. Kathleen Sides on December 7, 2014 at 15:05

    Thank-you so very much. I needed to hear what you had to say–especially at this time and place in my life.

  12. Rebecca on December 7, 2014 at 07:54

    These words are so very pertinent in my life right now. Thank you and amen.

  13. Sandra Ahn on December 2, 2013 at 07:24

    Br Curtis,
    Thank you for the message so timely for Advent and for myself.

    These two verses come to mind.
    “Be still and know that I am God.”

    “Come, taste and see for the Lord is good.”

    With a grateful heart,
    Sandra Ahn

  14. Michael Tessman on March 20, 2013 at 16:31

    One thinks of Meister Eckhart, and his exposition of Gelassenheit – a state of holy detachment – which is, after all, no different from the Buddhist teaching that says all our pain in life comes from attachments! Whether borrowing trouble from the past, or projecting trouble upon the future, living in the moment is the waiting of which the Psalmist (62) speaks.

  15. George E. Hilty on March 20, 2013 at 12:33

    This message and the video accompanying it are inspiring. Just showing up is 80% of life. The metaphor of botanical growth seems so powerful. God does all the work in the earth as He does in our souls. But we must plant the seed, water and cultivate the plant. Our prayer, scripture reading and devotional meditations are similar kinds of simple discipline–just “showing up”– to enable favorable conditions in which He does the work.

  16. Matt Dooley on November 21, 2012 at 16:37

    Thank you Brother Curtis–I just got home after having a significant change in my relationship and this sermon was just waiting in my inbox; of course there’s never a quick fix, but these words reassured me to trust in the waiting. So glad that I subscribe to these…like balm for the times when we fall off our bike and get scraped up. I hope you and the brothers have a wonderful thanksgiving!
    _Matt

  17. Deborah Voorhees on November 21, 2012 at 08:58

    How your ‘Now’ that was then, is so truly the ‘Now’ for me at this time. To borrow from one of my spiritual fathers, Martin Luther…here I stand, I can do no other. I can’t go back, I can’t move forward, I can only stand in this place and try to be most fully myself, the ‘Deborah’ the Lord intends me to be in this moment. How grateful I am to have an opportunity, in this season of my life, to experience waiting with intention, awareness, possibility, amazement, rather than rejecting the improbability of it all as seen by the World, and running aimlessly amuck, trying to find a place that is much more ‘understandable’. This is the place, now for me, that is under-stand-able. I am able to stand under this time and to know God and to be content to wait for what He has wrought, knowing He strengthens me to meet what He has set for me to meet.

  18. DLa Rue on November 21, 2012 at 07:45

    And yet again.

    DL

  19. Anita on December 6, 2011 at 07:17

    Absolutely the right word for me NOW. Thank you, Brother!

  20. F Black on December 2, 2011 at 14:32

    Thank you for the insights. They focus on the essence seeking.

  21. DLa Rue on December 2, 2011 at 06:28

    These little snippets can be uncannily pertinent. I’m sending in a couple of proposals for work that I hope will shape the next bit of my time for the good today…prayers appreciated, and thoughts about “now” (and the “thens” that must follow) are certainly uppermost.

    Merci mille fois.

Leave a Comment