The big effort of the praying saints, the ascetics, is to put the Mind in the Heart. Those are the terms they use. They say, the mind, or your consciousness, should be work and effort, become lodged inside your gut, your body, your heart. It occurs to me, that this is what it make Faith no longer a mental attitude, but something with all the power of heart, its will, its desire, its unbending determination. As has been pointed out in parts of this magazine, the pathetic and admirable attempt of Peter to walk out to Jesus on the water, failed for a lack of faith. His mind was still something easily reduced to commonplace concerns; his faith was largely cerebral. When the saints of the desert and the cave, and the cell, work at making faith, they are not arguing themselves to it, they are growing it, inside the heart, where nothing can defeat it.
Of course, it is more typical, to speak of faith as something you just have to try at, without speaking of a method of encouraging it. At least, I am not familiar with a general teaching in our culture, where we are informed about how to nurture the faith which walks on water. In addition, the work of the saint, is not usually said to be about encouraging faith; but rather, about purifying and emptying the mind, and sending it down to the heart and the silence. Nonetheless, prayer of the right kind, does make faith easy.
It has crossed my mind, and more than crossed it, that Jesus and St Paul do not give ‘exercises’ or rules for improving your faith; we could say, that the common or garden man should be able to have faith, without doing any special exercises, any routine of self-discipline, since the Gospels and the Epistles don’t give such exercises. This has troubled me. How do you advise yourself, or another person, to start doing inward focused prayer, if it’s not advised directly by Christ? I would suppose that, it is like the reading of Scripture, which is not advised, either: basically, it is taken for granted that the Jews of the first century were doing it anyway.
This issue of our magazine, is rather bitter about the condition of our country in parts. That’s justified. But it also devotes two lengthy essays to the first half of Matthew’s gospel. What is going on here is, that Jason is working out a theology or a philosophy of the self, and we have seen fit to publish this ‘Work in Progress’. There is also a long letter on the most prominent leaders of the ‘Right’ in the US, and in Great Britain, which originated as a letter to a friend. Saying this, we are pointing out that we do want to diversify our supply of contributors, to publish essays, reviews, and comment, but mostly reviews of useful interesting recent publications. We want poetry, and intellect at work.
As for poetry, it would be quite alright, if submissions of work were received, which described experience, lucidly experienced, and stated in appropriate and simple language. .
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