As you are now likely humming that familiar tune of a nursery rhyme you haven’t thought of in years, there is another joyful, intentional connection. There is, in fact, a real Brother John who addressed this very question as it often raised in prayer: “Am I sleeping?”
The sincere concern of a soul striving to grow in their relationship with God is how they just can’t seem to stay awake during their time of prayer. It isn’t as if they are entering prayer looking for a quick nap. It pains them to think they might be like the apostles in the Garden of Gethsemane who could not stay awake one hour with Jesus to “watch and pray” (Mt. 26:41). They imagine the Lord questioning them as He did the apostles, “Are you still sleeping?” (Mt. 26:45)
So, are we sleeping? There was a deep joy in my heart as I somehow began humming the tune of this nursery rhyme, I hadn’t thought of since childhood, when the connection was made with how perfectly it fits with perhaps the most profound spiritual writer of all time! The Fray John, fray being Spanish for “brother,” who wrote a poem of his own to provide an answer to the very question being asked in this nursery rhyme is St. John of the Cross.
His poetry is regarded as some of the finest in Spain. The Dark Night (Noche oscura) is perhaps his most well-known poem. His imagery in The Dark Night, even in the English translation, flows with grace from the very first line;
One dark night, fired with loves’ urgent longs—ah, the sheer grace!—I went out unseen, my house being now all stilled.
St. John eventually provided a commentary on the first part of this poem to help us understand the meaning behind some of the imagery. It is in the later part of this poem, where there is no commentary to help us, that we might ask Brother John, “are you sleeping?” For he describes how his Beloved, who lay sleeping on his flowering breast, “wounded my neck with His gentle hand, suspending all my senses.”
By all outward appearances, a suspension will make it appear as if a person has fallen asleep. When the neck is wounded, the head nods off. So, are you sleeping Brother John?
Both St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila are careful to recognize the suspending of senses as the work of God in a soul as they begin to receive His gift of contemplation. Without God’s guiding hand, St. Teresa “cannot understand how the mind can be stopped.”
Stopping the mind is what God does in prayer. He does this by suspending the senses. St. Teresa observes in the fourth dwelling of The Interior Castle how “the pain of distraction is felt when suspension does not accompany prayer.” Suspending our senses, St. Teresa continues, “doesn’t involve being in the dark or closing our eyes.” Rather, “When His Majesty desires the intellect to stop, He occupies it in another way and gives it a light so far above what we can attain that it remains absorbed.” Then, “without first wanting to do so, one does close one’s eyes and desire solitude.”
This suspending of senses will prove to be a very pivotal point in our life of prayer. We will likely be filled with doubts. We will surely ask ourselves, am I sleeping?
I remember praying with friends in the seminary, making our holy hour together, when I would begin to experience this gentle drawing inward. Although my whole being was wanting to go there, I would fight it off out of fear of appearing to be sleeping. In the graced moments when He did wound my neck and suspend my senses, even though what was experienced was profound, I would be filled with doubts on whether I was just sleeping. Eventually I came to realize that when I am sleeping, I don’t ask, am I sleeping? I might question whether I am dreaming, but that is quickly clarified upon waking. In actual sleep, no one seems to hear the question being asked, are you sleeping?
Given the beauty of what is experienced while the senses are suspended by Our Lord, perhaps a clearer question to answer is “are you kissing?” Contemplation is very much like a kiss one might enter with ones’ beloved. In a kiss something is experienced that we cannot experience alone. Alone, we might talk about what a great thing a kiss would be, we may reflect upon a kiss from the past, yet it all pales in comparison to an actual kiss. The actual kiss requires the mutual participation of two persons. It cannot be forced; it must be mutually and freely entered. When it comes, words cease, eyes close, and the knees can get weak.
In the Song of Songs, we hear of the bride’s burning desire for God to “Kiss me with the kisses of his mouth” (1:2). This kiss cannot be forced. When it comes, words cease, eyes close, and it is the neck that gets weak as our senses are wonderfully suspended. What unfolds in this time of rest is clearly not of our own doing. “During this time,” St. Teresa explains, “the soul is left as though without its senses; for it has no power to think even if it wants to.” It is not a “dreamy state,” it “only seems that the soul is asleep.”
The soul emerges from this time of prayer renewed in a way that no brief time of sleep could ever hope to do. St. Teresa observes how “God so places Himself in the interior part of the soul that when it returns to itself it can in no way doubt that it was in God and God was in it.” “Oh the greatness of God!” “How transformed the soul is when it comes out of this prayer after having been placed within the greatness of God and so closely joined with Him for a little while.”
Contemplation is generally regarded as the height and goal of Christian prayer. Yet there is much confusion surrounding the method and meaning of contemplation, even in Christian circles. Contemplation serves to mark that point in prayer when what is being experienced is no longer merely the activity of man, but the pure activity of God. Yet when that activity begins to unfold, St. John sadly observes:
If there is no one to understand these persons (at this stage), they either turn back and abandon the road or lose courage, or at least they hinder their own progress because of their excessive diligence in treading the path of discursive meditation.
Thankfully, Fray John and Madre Teresa understand when we are not sleeping. Her wise advice on prayer, to “do that which best stirs you to love,” are words that I often pass on, to which I now add, and when God gives you the slightest inclination to put that down and close your eyes, do that! This kiss of contemplation may just be coming.
When Our Lord comes to wound our neck and suspend all our senses, remember, Brother John has taught us that we are not sleeping!
Editor’s Note: Fr. Wayne Sattler’s book, And You Will Find Rest: What God Does in Prayer, is available from Sophia Institute Press.
Image from Wikimedia Commons
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