Contemplative Evangelism? Is that a paradox?

It was about 3pm on a Thursday. In two hours I was to be co-leading a contemplative prayer service using music from the Taize community at the university. It had been a frenetic day- in the preceding weeks I had been staying in a room at my family's house while my house was being repaired, while teaching a class two hours away and commuting by bus, and searching for a job in a new city.

I had been living in a delicate balance that only the comfort of regularities in the midst of irregularities could maintain: my twenty minutes of centering prayer in the morning, and those prayers I call my returning prayers which I return to throughout the day.

On that Thursday the balance was tipped over, and the details began to take over; I went to buy a pitch pipe for the contemplative service at the same time that I was supposed to be in a meeting an hour away ... and then I left the pitch pipe at home.

By 3pm, I was on campus trying to work on a few other things before, and to purchase a few moments of quiet so I could provide a contemplative space for others ... knowing of course how much I needed that contemplative space.

Oh, no. No pitch pipe. It was 3:30. I ran to the theology school and found my co-leader: Janet, I said, I promised Kate we would have a pitch pipe! All right, she says, I'll rush and pick it up on my scooter. But that means you're in charge of the icons and the weeds. She directed me to the chapel where the "Russian guy" (some saint or other, in her words) would be, and a closet where she had carefully wrapped some weeds to place on the altar for our autumnal service.

There was something ironic yet fitting about running up the stairs frantically to find the Russian guy, and about the delicate way I had to carry some weeds. The details had become so elaborately absurd that a certain kind of contemplation- laughter and irreverence- were coming to the fore.

While Janet went to my house and collected the pitch pipe, I set up the altar. It was simple: some green fabric for ordinary time, and some golds for the natural season. Then some candles, our friend the Russian guy, and the weeds - which were beautifully gold as well- cloaked the fabrics. Very quickly, it became a space prepared for prayer. And we were finished early. I could sit and collect the peace from the space.

The service began: as usual we took a couple of the chants to collect ourselves into the place, and then the music we made began to blend with the space, and to parallel the gusts of wind outside that continued to blow the door open through the prayer. The short silence in the middle of the service, after the prayers, was an invitation to be present, and it opened the second half of the service up to become our gateway back into the world outside.

There were four of us present. And where two or three are gathered in Christ's name, so the Holy Spirit is present.

I began this service in January of this calendar year, last academic year. The summer prior, I had attended an elegantly simple Taize service in Tuebingen, Germany. When I left, I felt that Taize service was a kernel of something I wanted to take back with me- though I was not sure how or where. Then, in the fall, it occurred to me that the university's chapel was rarely used, and that Taize services were known for reaching younger people. Wouldn't it be wonderful to bring this to the students at this university? Wouldn't it be a great way to give the chapel some more use?

So I hatched something of a contemplative evangelism plan ... I was convinced that the students were just waiting for the opportunity for a meditation service to appear, since their lives are so frenetic. I was convinced that an ecumenical prayer service was just the recipe for revitalizing faith at the university ... I exaggerate. I never really thought the masses would come begging for contemplative prayer ... but I thought we might get 10 or so people. That would have been nice.

Instead there were times when there were just two of us, and the most we ever had was eight. If we had five we were doing really well.

Is reaching out with contemplation a paradox in itself? Can we ever really be evangelists with contemplative prayer? Or is that just bound to fail because it will undermine both? And what if it is one's gift to translate the contemplative to others?

Hannah Arendt says that contemplation is the highest state of humanity, and that this state is the product of the integration of individuals in community life. It is, in a way, the ontological character of the community life that can only be known through the lens of the whole community. One does not contemplate; and communities are only true communities if they are knit together by the spirit of contemplation- otherwise they are just societies. A group of building blocks arrayed randomly without a central purpose.

I like this understanding because unlike the traditional religious definitions of contemplation, based on the inner life and the methods of discipline associated with contemplation (meditation, the hours, chant, etc>), Arendt understands contemplation as a way, a process, a mode, not a static thing. In Arendt's world, contemplation in a community means we would all be better at listening to the inner voice.

I think Taize services are like this, with the repetition of words of Scripture, molding the group gently, much like our daily lives. The way we walk each day, the way we get out of bed on the same side and do the same things each day, these routines work on us. And m0st of the time, we are around others doing the very same things. I wonder, is community made in little processes like these ... little threads that we gradually knit together.