On Friday the 25th of May, Philip
Harvey gave a paper on the Carmelite spiritual writer Ruth Burrows, as part of
this year’s Carmelite Centre Symposium, ‘A Readers’ Festival of Spirituality’.
The following is part 1 of the three-part paper.
Ruth Burrows is an English woman who was born in
1923. She will turn 95 this coming August. Of all the spiritual writers we have
listened to in this Symposium, Ruth Burrows has lived longest across the set
timeframe, arriving in this world only five years after the end of the war to
end all wars. She grew up in a country where that was meant to mean a settled
future.
You
would not learn these facts when you read ‘Before the Living God’, an
autobiography only written due to the encouraging instruction from the superior
of her house. There she entered the religious life at the age of 18, but other
dates and ages in the book are altered, presumably to protect herself and
others, innocent or otherwise. Nor are we likely to collect much vivid
information about her online, because there isn’t any. There is no entry for
her on Wikipedia, for example, making her virtually a non-person in the virtual
age we now find ourselves. Perhaps she would prefer it that way. One thing
though is certain in this regard, Ruth Burrows lived through the modern age.
‘Modern’
is an elastic word. It comes from the Latin adverb ‘modo’, meaning “just now”.
The modern world and the modern age conjure certain images in our mind that,
for some reason, do not seem to include strict religious observance or a
contemplative nun sitting at her table writing about spirituality. Why this is
so need not detain us as these things have been going on right through the
modern age and are defining images when we think about a Carmelite nun like
Ruth Burrows. Ruth herself uses the word ‘modern’ in various different ways
that I, as a reader, cannot help but find noticeable. Hers has been a life
primarily of withdrawal from the world of action into the world of prayer. Yet
she is alive to the modern world, as alive as any of us.
In
a recent interview she was asked this: What has been the greatest challenge for
you in living the contemplative life and living in community? Ruth replies:
“Coping
with myself, both in community and in the ‘desert atmosphere’ of Carmel. I am,
by nature, extremely egocentric. I had to face myself head on. In my early
years I felt repugnance for and anger at some practices brought in from Spain
and France, alien to English culture and to what was then modern times. There
was real physical hardship. I suffered a lot from the cold, not least because
it ‘got me down’.”
Modern
times here seems to mean her own conditions, what is normal and natural. In
some ways it may mean her creature comforts, but it certainly means the world
of sensible English ways that she was used to. Why import practices from a warm
climate that are difficult to maintain in a cold climate? Simple commonsense
resists practices that are not conducive to a normal, happy daily existence.
Repugnance
and anger are reported in finely recalled detail in ‘Before the Living God.’
This memorable memoir is written in the tradition of St Thérèse of Lisieux’s
‘Story of a Soul’, a personal account of her growth in religious life, her
experience of the convent and its varied residents, and her relationship with
God. Importantly, Ruth’s book was written after the Second Vatican Council,
during a time when nuns could still remember very clearly how things were
before the changes.
We
read about the extreme privations of her life in Carmel, the regimes of eating,
working, praying, and sleeping. She can recall a time when “age-old traditions
of kissing the floor and performing other gestures of humility and subjection
were very much in vogue. At the slightest hint of reprimand one had to kiss the
floor and remain in the state of prostration until told to rise.” [BLG 66] We
read about the challenges brought into the community by other novices,
especially those with forceful personalities or obvious neuroses, though Ruth
is even more unsparing about her own faults. As she intimates in the interview,
it felt as though only outside was everything really modern.
She
writes: “The world could rock and reel. Everything and everyone could fail me.
I myself could be broken, could be a complete failure in the eyes of men but
nothing could prevent me from loving God. I was faced with the possible breakup
of the Carmel or my own rejection by the community. But nothing could prevent
me from giving myself to God. I remember distinctly it was this way round. It
was still impossible to make real to myself in any way that God loved me even
though I made continual acts of faith and tried to act as if I were sure of his
love. It seems to me that God has given
me the grace to seek the truth and to stand in the truth, and essentially this
means the truth about myself.” (BLG 73)
At
the same time, there is another sense of modern at play in Carmel itself, one
to do with the foundations of Carmelite life. You learn that Carmelite
tradition, and the writings of St Teresa of Avila in particular, serve as
guides to living and behaving, to the point of being formative foundation
documents in their own right. Ruth’s love of Teresa is expressed often.
“In the ‘Way of Perfection’, we are allowed to hear St
Teresa in intimate conversation with a beginner who has no idea how to ‘set
about it’. Typically, and significantly, she directs her to the divine
Companion who is present and lovingly intent upon her. Let her respond to this
Friend; let her ponder on who he is, what he has done for her, how he has shown
his incredible love, what he wants of her; let her treat him with humble,
tender intimacy. From the very start, without spending time on intellectual
exercises, this beginner is directed to relate to a Person and to reflect on he
who is present. This musing is itself a prayer. Do not leave him to go and
think about him! To do that would be as foolish as breaking from a lover’s arms
to study his photograph and his curriculum vitae! This more objective form of
meditation is indeed essential and must not be omitted, but, according to
Teresa’s understanding, the hour set aside for prayer is not the time for it;
that hour is for loving much, not thinking much. John of the Cross, too, sees
that the heart of prayer is the presence of God within the soul, a presence
that is not static but an unceasing, positive loving that prepares us to
receive ever more love, an action that is purifying, transforming, uniting.” [EP
174]
Yet
Ruth is capable of getting into very Teresian-like arguments about matters that
no longer fit their conditions. Modern times means finding reason for thinking
differently about how things may be done now and in the future, even in the
religious life itself:
“Now the vast
majority of spiritual authors, St Teresa among them, claim that there are two
paths to holiness, the mystical way and the ordinary way. This we cannot
accept. The notion of the dual carriage-way derives from a misconception which
another modern insight has led us to correct.” [GMP 10]
Within
Carmel itself, the nuns grow to perceive themselves as modern Carmelites, as
distinct from those in earlier times who lived according to the very same
teachings. One author, Michelle Jones, writes that “I mainly see the word as a flag indicating a contrast
to the psycho-spiritual framework of Teresa and, to a lesser extent, John [of
the Cross].”
I
have been in email correspondence with Michelle Jones, someone living in
Western Australia who knows much more about Ruth Burrows than me, and who
kindly sent me a useful
collection of passages where ‘modern’ appears:
“If we have paid
attention to modern scientific investigations of the psyche, and it is
unreasonable to think we can understand Teresa and other mystics if we have
failed to do so, then we shall have come to the conclusion that it is a most
mysterious, largely unexplored dimension where almost anything might happen.”
[ICE 47]
Indeed, she
rightly identifies Teresa herself as full of psychological insight about
others, and herself: “Moreover, our
modern insight into the mystery of the human psyche – an insight always
limited, ever open to surprises — especially of the dimension that we call the
unconscious, applauds this objective appraisal of Teresa.” [The Wisdom of St
Teresa of Avila 8]
She says: “The
science of psychology is a feature of our times, and can we ignore it? To be
true to our humanness means accepting these human helps. In the same way with
science at our elbow it would be foolish and presumptuous to start asking God
for miracles to cure what modern medicine can deal with.” [TBJ 57]
Reading
‘Before the Living God’ we find that even though the book covers the entire
mid-century period, Ruth mentions no world events or famous people that could
serve as landmarks. We are left with a question that answers itself: Is any of
that very important? On one page she makes reference to concentration camps and
the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, not to help with chronology but to
remind us that “the world’s sorrows” exist, and are understood. How much
emotional response any one person can give to the daily news before exhaustion
or indifference set in, is a good question. Ruth is not in denial, or escaping
into quietism, but wishes rather to draw us into a place where the self finds
peace amidst the tumults of information news, our regular encounter with “the
world’s sorrows”, both minor and extreme. She returns to this in ‘Love
Unknown’.
“No
one can pretend that, when besieged as we are by multifarious cares, in time of
crushing grief, when dismayed by the horrors of perpetrated evil and the human
suffering following on natural disasters, it is easy to maintain a lively sense
of God’s presence and his love which embraces us at every moment. Yet, to be
true to our Christian calling to a life of holiness, to be a light to the
world, we must work for steadfast faith, or rather, activate the faith we have
been given. ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he has sent.’
(John 6:29). We must know what we are to believe, and how can we really know
with the heart unless we take the responsibility on ourselves to labour to know
the one true God and Jesus Christ his Son? Only too easily we fall for an idol that
our pride and self-love create. Reality is there irrespective of our adverting
to it or our belief in it. All our blessedness lies in recognizing, affirming
and gratefully surrendering to it. In this is God’s glory. He made us for this
blessedness.” (LU 117)
One
other symptom of the modern world that makes Ruth very modern is atheism. She
confesses that she wishes to spend her whole life writing about nothing but
God, when and even when not she has “the slightest feeling of him.” Her honesty
builds trust of a kind, as when on the same page she can express her concern
about whether God even exists, only then to declare that her dedication to God
is everything in her life. It almost seems that for her, as for all of us,
arguments about the existence of God are one precondition of living in the
modern world and she lives with her own challenges and doubts in this regard,
which are openly expressed in her writing. This is though, I think, a lead to
her complete attention on who God is and how we might understand and relate to
God. She is highly attuned to the self-deceptions and reactions that come with
trying to live a godly life, which she is constantly reminding us have to be
let go of in order to get closer to the reality of God.
Sources:
Before
the Living God. New edition. London, Burns & Oates, 2008 [BLG]
Essence
of Prayer. London, Burns & Oates, 2006 [EP]
Guidelines
for Mystical Prayer. London, Sheed & Ward, 1976 [GMP]
Interior
Castle Explored : St Teresa’s teaching on the life of deep union with God. 2nd
edition. London, Burns & Oates, 1982 [ICE]
Love
Unknown. London, Continuum, 2011 [LU]
To
believe in Jesus. Denville, NJ, Dimension, 1981 [TBJ]
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