Justin Appel

Dear Friends,

Have you ever rushed into a situation, barrels blazing, with a corrective measure? Have you ever “put your foot in your mouth” by speaking without consideration for someone’s feelings? Have you spoken when a considered silence would have been more appropriate?

I certainly have, and more times than I care to remember. My own father’s admonition to me as a child to use “gracious speech”—a notion drawn directly from the Proverbs—has stayed with me, even when I fail to put it into practice.

One way to describe such failures is a lack of a contemplative stance.

Today’s epistle lesson puts forward the basic model for being in the world, that of self-emptying or kenosis. This is the mode Christ assumed when he became human and accepted a sacrificial death.

Our own faith and scriptures teach us that a stance of self-emptying, essentially a kind of contemplative view of the world, is our calling.

Rowan Williams, in his brilliant (and difficult) book Looking East in Wintertime, has much to say about kenosis—and I should not pretend to have comprehended it all. However, a basic element of this stance is learning to see the world, not as a series of things to be mastered or acquired, but as a web of relationship between creatures which pull us all back to our Creator. Such “angelic seeing” allows us to be present to the world without egotism, ambition, or the desire to control—contemplative kenosis.

In Arvo Pärt’s Festina Lente, the same music unfolds at three different speeds. Each element relates to the other, while all point back to a central mode of expression.

“Contemplation is allowing the world to be itself in your presence, and allowing yourself to be changed by your presence to it.” (Rowan Williams, Silence and Honey Cakes)

Yours in Christ,

—Justin