‘Experiencing God in a Time of Crisis’ by Sarah Bachelard BOOK REVIEW

‘Experiencing God in a Time of Crisis’ by Sarah Bachelard. Revised by Liam Kelly. Convivium Press, 2012. ISBN 978-1-934996-32-4

In this short book, Australian spiritual writer Sarah Bachelard introduces us to contemplative practice. She is quick to warn against the simple desire to have a religious experience, behaviour she recognizes over time even in her own life. By asking how we might know if we are experiencing God, she gradually takes us through true and false ideas about God, transitory and lasting forms of experience, before inviting us to consider contemplation itself, i.e. the possibility of our own contemplative life in the world.

She writes: “Contemplation is a practice of becoming still enough, silent enough, open enough to ‘hear’ the voice of the other Other. It is a practice of readiness and expectancy. ‘Here am I’ is the expression of the contemplative stance – open, receptive and listening. ‘Here am I’ is a surrendering of one’s own agenda and one’s prior conceptions about what is needful, even about what is good … we learn radical non-possessiveness in relation to ourselves, our notions of God, our desires. In the space that opens up, we find ourselves beginning to tune in, at first barely recognising the sound, to the Word that resonates in the silence.” (p. 36)

Bachelard’s concern though is with crisis, whether collective or personal crisis, and how we are sustained in transition “from the suffering of crisis into a deeper wholeness and truthfulness.” (p. 59) Written in 2015, she is talking to a pre-pandemic readership, but her words speak directly and meaningfully to the current international crisis and our own awareness. Bachelard provides an extended meditation on the Passion story as “the wayless way”, summarised in the section headings “the surrender of Friday”, “the waiting of Saturday” and “the gift of Sunday”. The concluding meditation draws on her own personal crises while using a range of contemplative writers who speak to the truth of crisis.

Thomas Merton is quoted in regard to the discovery that acceptance of self and our own limits can awaken a profound love of others – “a profound compassion for all of us.” Iris Murdoch speaks of “unselfing”, where we overcome the propping up of the ego, and belief in the illusions it creates. Then John Main, clearly an important influence, who writes of the risk of contemplation itself: “it requires nerve to be really quiet.” Or Parker Palmer who she says, in response to the crisis of questioning if our work is being effective, “judges his action, not by the result it gets, but by its fidelity to his own calling and identity.” Bachelard presents us with different dimensions of contemplative living, grounded in lived experience and its many varying challenges.

‘The White Stone’ by Esther de Waal BOOK REVIEW

 A short review by Philip Harvey in the Autumn Issue of the Newsletter of the Community of the Holy Name, Cheltenham

‘The White Stone’ by Esther de Waal. Canterbury Press Norwich, 2021 ISBN 978-1-78622-401-9

Written during lockdown, in a period of solitude in which the author had to plan moving from her home of fifty years in Wales to a new home in Oxford, this book is about how “we all have to face up to the process of letting go at intervals throughout our lives.” She writes of “embarking upon a new life when one has reached old age.”

Letting go of familiar places, letting go of former ways, letting go of people in our life, and possessions – these are realities for which we find we have no choice. This book follows the different ways in which the author has reflected and learnt to live through such letting go. She explains how age has taught her to approach the world with simplicity. Learning to forgive is essential. She finds meaning through common rituals, detailing them as she goes.

Given the author’s lifelong interest in monastic life, which she has drawn upon and written about extensively, it makes sense that this is central to her now. Hence her questions, coming from Benedictine practice, “Am I becoming a more loving person?” and “Are you hastening towards your heavenly home?” Likewise, her renewed need to let go of illusion and false gods, to listen “with the ear of the heart.” A chapter on reading the Psalms, relying particularly on the work of Thomas Merton and Jim Cotter, is an integral connection.   

This book of learning and loss is the closest Esther de Waal has come to an autobiography. It is not without grief and pain, though thanksgiving is the keynote. She is taking stock of her life, what she has gained and lost, but significantly what she values that she must learn to let go of. It’s easy to let go of things you don’t like, much harder letting go of that which you love.

The range of her quotation, most especially, is a value she gives back to the reader. No one else can be Esther de Waal and this is her personal account of dealing with change. However, there are meditations, poems, sayings and stories here that speak to our own individual experience in this context, that speak of her world of valued spiritual guides. She writes: “I am grateful when W. H. Auden speaks of the need to practice the scales of rejoicing, because it reminds me of the sort of discipline that I should be looking for in myself.”