The contrast between the contemplative and the active as styles of christian discipleship has an ancient and more or less homoured history in Christian thought and practice. The classic domestic scene where Martha works her pan out in the kitchen and Mary sits at Jesus feet engrossed in whatever Jesus is saying gives a foundational image to the contrast. Vermeer, in what I think is one of his too easily underrated paintings has a quite different take on the discipleship of the kitchen as opposed to the discipleship of the footstool. That loaf of bread is central to the picture and its eucharistic significance unmistakable. Somebody has to nourish, do the needful. I know, Jesus says one thing is needful, and he doesn't mean baking the loaf. His put down of Martha by saying Mary has chosen the better part shouldn't be too quickly seized on though.
We live in an age of time poverty, time management and time miserliness. By which I mean there isn't a lot of space and time in contemporary existence for folk to "choose the better part and do the one thing needful". Mainly because we have evolved a culture of endless energy expenditure, and we have bought into it with eyes wide open. We have reconfigured our life priorities so that the things that are needful are productivity, efficiency, time-saving, multi-tasking and in which we admire speed, profit, status and whatever else our bondage to the market might earn. Contemplation is time wasting to the consumer mentality; contentment deprives the market of its power; silence and solitude are just so difficult to achieve in the noise and crowdedness of contemporary life.
I was thinking about all this again while reading Divine Discontent, one the newest studies of the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton. The chapter on Merton the contemplative doesn't say much that is new, nor does it need to do so. Merton knew perfectly well the dangers of contemplation as escapism from life and its problems, ours or other people's. His answer needs to be heard by the contemporary church, and by each Christian community. Silence, solitude and contemplation are the dispositions which make it possible for God to be heard above the noise of our wanting. Contemplation creates space in thought and feeling for those concerns that lie light years beyond our own security, satisfaction and self interests – the concerns of God for a loved but broken world.
The contemplative is the one whose time of reflection and listening equips the mind and conscience to respond with integrity, immediacy and ethical urgency to issues such as those raised by the recent CIA report on torture as a State sponsored weapon. To be quiet is not the same as quiescence; to be inactive is not passivity; to contemplate is not to withdraw from the world, it is to immerse the mind and soul in the hurt and brokenness and wounds of the world. To love the world as God does, and to see it through the eyes of the Crucified God
In the same way, to be active in caring, faithful in protesting, outspoken on behalf of the poor, vulnerable and unjustly treated, need not mean we live only out of our own inner resources of conscience, emotion and thoughtful anger. That loaf in Vermeer's painting is unbroken, but no one looking at the painting can miss its significance about the bread of life, the broken bread given for the world. We are nourished in the Eucharist, sustained in those times deliberately taken to open ourselves to the presence of God, to listen more carefully to the Words of the living Lord Jesus, to receive as the very essence of our living, the renewing nourishment of the Holy Spirit. In the contemplative receptivity of Mary, and the active giving of Martha, there is a necessary balance. We only give what we have first received; and only as we give to others, do we truly receive what God has first given to us. Grace is never a private possession; it is always a shared gift. In a hungry world, the same goes for bread. Vermeer knew that.
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