Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims,
This Friday, June 13th we are delighted to welcome Wisdom Council member and award winning translator Carmen Acevedo Butcher to lead us in a retreat on Brother Lawrence and the Practice of the Presence. Read on for Carmen’s reflection Courageous Brother Lawrence and His Easy Practice.
In the Paris of King Louis XIV, Brother Lawrence was little noticed. Born Nicolas Herman into poverty, he was uneducated, a disabled war veteran, and the cook for a local monastery. Over 300 years later, though, his Practice of the Presence is beloved for its easy-on-the-heart wisdom for living with love and peace.
While spending myriad hours translating the down-to-earth friar’s mysticism from French, I was communing with him when the Covid pandemic began. The streets eerie quiet in lockdowns, bird songs erupted. Their defiant joy was a sign to keep going. He has deep joy also. One of his friends said of him: “The more hopeless things seemed to him, the more he hoped. He was like a rock that when beaten by the waves of the sea becomes a stronger refuge in the middle of the storm.”
Translating the abiding calm of Brother Lawrence’s work, I found it translated me, revealing the gold of true Self in my shadow. His life shows that deep peace requires only that we ask for it, and follow through in practice, being grateful for God’s grace. His gentle teaching can help us all recognize and embody more of that gold.
Brother Lawrence knew horrors not unlike those today. When he was teenaged, twenty-something, and fifty-something, plagues hit. A war left him limping and in pain for over fifty years, and psychologically traumatized. A Little Ice Age brought starvation as crops failed. A gilded and tyrannical government had no concern for the 98% who were not noblemen. Cruel church battles over doctrine also injured many.
During a severe crisis of soul that lasted from twenty-six to thirty-six, Brother Lawrence organically developed his practice of the presence. A spiritual exercise, it is simply talking with and listening to God. He admits, “At first, when we’re beginning to form the habit of conversing continually with God, we must somewhat apply ourselves to this practice, bringing everything we do back to Love,” but, he adds, “after a little effort, we feel awakened by God’s love without any difficulty.” In this way, learning this practice is not unlike developing the habit of flossing one’s teeth, hard at first, but becoming easy.
People were drawn to his kindness and wisdom. When Brother Lawrence was fifty-two, and the priest Joseph of Beaufort was about thirty, Joseph paid Brother Lawrence a visit, and they became good friends. That friendship is the reason the teaching of this humble Discalced Carmelite friar was preserved.
Our increasingly on fire world needs Brother Lawrence’s time-tested insights. In practicing the presence he found a gently repeatable activity that helped him alchemize everything over time into a deepening relationship with “Love’s divine presence.” He told Joseph that “in every situation” he asked “for the grace to do this work.” Like the desert abbas and ammas, Brother Lawrence made the outside like the inside and the inside like the outside. He made his life a prayer.
I am grateful for his accessible teaching. He describes experiencing “the presence of God” as a “gentle, loving awareness” that “lights a divine fire imperceptibly in the soul.” He says it gave him profound peace: “The more the soul advances, the more its faith intensifies, and finally its faith becomes so vivid that you might even respond, saying: ‘I no longer believe, but I see and I experience.’”
As divisiveness and polycrises proliferate, this humble friar’s presence practice can help us find tranquility and continue listening deeply for what is ours to do.
Please join us this Friday to discover the wisdom of Brother Lawrence and the power of this simple practice.
Today we also release the audio podcast for Day 6 of our Cultivating Seeds of Liberation Prayer Cycle. Day 6 is on the theme of joy. Listen to the podcast here or on your favourite podcast app.
With great and growing love,
Christine
Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE
The quotations are from Carmen Acevedo Butcher, Practice of the Presence: A Revolutionary Translation by Carmen Acevedo Butcher (Broadleaf Books, 2022).
