The Rhythm of Engagement & Withdrawal – Br. Keith Nelson
Luke 5: 12-16
“But now more than ever the word about Jesus spread abroad; many crowds would gather to hear him and to be cured of their diseases. But he would withdraw to deserted places and pray.”
All four of the gospels give us tell-tale signs of a distinct pattern in Jesus’s own rhythm of life: his withdrawal into solitary places for prayer. The word in Greek can mean to slip away quietly, to go back, to go aside: it literally means to vacate or make space down, perhaps a bit like how we say, ‘My schedule will free up in a few days.’ The word withdraw can have rather negative connotations in English: to take something away after it has been offered; or to stop supporting someone, like a political candidate. People go into withdrawal if they stop taking an addictive drug: the end result will be freedom from addiction, but in the meantime, great suffering is in store. To describe someone as withdrawn is not a positive assessment.
Luke’s gospel reminds us more than once that Jesus quietly but very intentionally slipped away from people, including his own closest circle, in order to pray. Luke’s Jesus knows how to balance competing demands by exercising the right amount of push against dominant social expectations. As the Spirit began to work in and through Jesus to bring the healing so many were desperately seeking, it is easy to imagine Jesus being physically pushed and pulled by the massive crowds clamoring for his attention. In the passage just before today’s reading, we’re given a vivid portrait of such a crowd: Jesus has to teach from a boat because the crowd is pressing in upon him. But it seems that even Jesus’s disciples were challenged by their Teacher’s unusual proclivity to seek solitude. At the beginning of Mark’s gospel, Jesus rises very early in the morning to withdraw and pray. In response, “Simon and his companions hunted for him. When they found him, they said to him, ‘Everyone is searching for you.’ This momentary circumstance of distress also has an existential tone, brought home to me once by the King James Version, which reads: “All men seek for thee.” People aren’t just hungry and thirsty for good news. They’re desperate and despairing for meaning. Once some scrap of it has been sighted, panic can easily ensues if it seems to disappear for even a moment.
In a very different time and culture, we are subject to the same tension between withdrawal and engagement. The world would have us believe that productive, extroverted engagement is the entire story, until we “just can’t even” and have to sleep through our entire day off, or binge on Netflix until our eyes bleed! But as those who are sealed as Christ’s own in baptism, we are committed to seeking a balance that will require us to push against dominant social expectations. We are committed to seeking a withdrawal that makes space not just for numbed disengagement – the kind that can convince us to forget our inner life entirely – but for restorative engagement with God. Without some empty space, there will be no room for God to abide. In order to fully live out our callings, to make wise and inspired choices directed by God’s will, to become conduits of God’s healing, or to offer words that reflect Christ’s good news, we must come to know the withdrawal of Christ to the desert, if only from time to time. We must come to know the silence and darkness of night or early morning and the curtain of rest it gathers around us. We must come to know a space set apart for God to work in us, and to allow time for such work to unfold without our help or our surveillance. Otherwise, we are in danger of a bloated, blinding, loud, and supremely self-directed journey with God. Our choices will reflect our own will. Our words to others will be mere self-engineered problem-solving. Our words of good news will become platitudes and well-wishing. Our spirits will be stuck at noonday, and fluorescent bulbs will eclipse the flickering of candle or star.
The season of Epiphany celebrates the gradual, yet exhilarating revelation of God’s light and truth in the world. But without mystery – the irreducible mystery that is God’s nature and the mystery of our deepest self in God – revelation has no meaning, no place to come from, and no place to return to. Revelation awakens our love for a mystery that fills and fulfills us but always leaves us thirsting for more. Practicing meaningful balance between withdrawal and engagement helps us embrace and savor the gradual light of revelation, as it alternates with the pregnant pause or restful silence suffused with God’s mystery.
I am working to enlarge that “space for God to abide”; your message encourages me. Thank you, Br Keith.
I hear Leonard
Cohen saying,
“Forget your perfect offering.
There’s a crack in everything.
That lets the light gets in.””
I’ have L.Cohen’s cd s and play them often
I never thought about God in that song but now I’m going to listen more intently.
I deeply appreciate your words Keith. There is a concept in Jewish Mysticism that rings true to your reflection. That is the idea of TzimTzum:
Tzimtzum is a Hebrew word that means “contraction” or “withdrawal” and is used in Lurianic Kabbalah to describe the process of creation:
Explanation
In Lurianic Kabbalah, tzimtzum is the idea that God limited the infinite light of the Godhead to create a space for the finite realms, or Four Worlds, to exist. This initial contraction created a “vacant space” where new creative light could shine.
Paradox
Tzimtzum gives rise to a paradox of God’s simultaneous presence and absence within the vacuum that created the world.
Concepts
Tzimtzum is one of three concepts in Lurianic Kabbalah, along with shevirat ha-kelim (“breaking of the vessels”) and tiqqun (“restoration”).
Origin
The concept of tzimtzum was established by the 16th-century mystic Rabbi Isaac Luria, also known as the Arizal. His disciple, Rabbi Chaim Vital, documented the concept in the Kabbalistic text Etz Chaim.
Meaning
The word tzimtzum has both ontological and epistemological meanings. The ontological meaning is “contraction”, “withdrawal”, or “condensation”, while the epistemological meaning is “concealment” or “occultation”.
A DIFFERENT ,BUT WO0NDERFUL WAY TO THINK ABOUT HOW WE CAN LIVE OUR LIVES TODAY IN OUR SOCIETY.
I must admit that, at least at times, I engage in that “supremely self-directed journey with God”. A problem with that is that it allows for the reassuring feeling that I am doing the right thing, when in fact I may be listening to myself. But, being reassured, I don’t always feel the need to search, and open myself up, further. Thank you for today’s lesson.
The opposite of faith is certainty and leaves no room for mystery. May God protect me from the chains of certainty.
Good plea!
A wonderful reminder. Even the church and its multitude of engagements- and they are all good and noble opportunities to serve and learn- can take us away from precious times of silence with God
So much wisdom here. The need for the kind of withdrawal alluded to by Br. Keith is crucial. But it’s so easy to lose sight of that fact, given how little attention and emphasis it receives (not to mention active, vigorous pushback from mainstream consumer culture).
Hi Br Keith! Great insight. Miss you!!
Raised questions, for me: In today’s vernacular it seems that ‘withrawal’ indeed suggests receding from addictive behavior/substance. And for some of us to safely withdrawal from self-inflicted insanity we needed to endure a medically supervised detox for days. Pure hell on the way to heaven. I’m wondering what the spiritual correlation would be to such acute physical intervention (if survived) in stages, and where/how the “work” of monks might support to such a challenging essential detox.
Thank you for this wonderful message. And thank for acknowledging that there are, indeed, dominant social expectations, which leave many of us feeling like social outcasts when choose not to engage in everything.
Keith, thank you ince again for your beautiful/ insightful words.
Most Affirming
Thank you, Brother Keith Nelson. Withdrawal to me is time to meditate.
Jeff McGuire
Reno, Nevada
Thank you Brother Keith
We need the space to realise anew our priorities but sometimes it is hard to go apart when the culture we live in is calling for engagement and activity. Guess we need disciplin