Award-winning translator Carmen Acevedo Butcher has a Ph.D. in Medieval Studies, Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Georgia. She teaches in the College Writing Programs at the University of California, Berkeley. Her translation of Brother Lawrence’s Practice of the Presence is called “the new standard.” Her Cloud of Unknowing translation received a 46th Georgia Author of the Year Award, and is a Shambhala Pocket Series book and Audible book. You can hear Carmen on (Re)Thinking Faith, Messy Jesus Business, Encountering Silence, and more podcasts.
When I studied for a year in Heidelberg at Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, it wasn’t my teachers who taught me to speak German, it was the children in my life and also a septuagenarian. The teachers scared me. Combine dyslexia with I-can-write-and-read-German-but-I-can’t-speak-it-or-understand-it, and I was a mess in class. Walking down Plöckgasse to the main library to review, I studied the cobblestones and feared the next class session when I’d be called on to speak haltingly.
Meanwhile, the Buschbeck family took me in. Sophie Buschbeck was 79 to my 22. She was a widow. She lived on Mozartstrasse and loved music. She took me with her to the blind Gemüsefrau to buy vegetables, she took me on walks up and along scenic and historic Philosophenweg, she took me to church, she took me to visit shut-ins, including one famous former concert pianist who’d only play for Sophie, she took me to art museums, she invited me to a Christmas with a real tree and beeswax candles burning on it, and she had me clean her rugs and her toilet and wash her steps. And she cooked a roast chicken for me every Friday since “Americans like roast chicken.”
She went from Frau Buschbeck and the formal “Sie,” to asking me to call her Mutti and use the intimate “Du.” And her grandchildren said things to me like (except, in German): “You speak as if you have a hot potato in your mouth!” Which is apparently how my Southern accent elongated the crisp German syllables to their ears. And “We don’t say it like that!” Meanwhile, their parents kept telling me my German was “hervorragend!” “terrific!” When it wasn’t.
Her husband was a Lutheran minister in World War II and was five years in a Russian prison camp. She said that every day she asked God to send her “Mann”—her husband home, and one day she looked out from her balcony and saw an unrecognizable figure but with a gait she knew, a way of walking she went to embrace. Haggard, underweight, his face disheveled and marked with suffering.
“And,” she told me (also in German), “for every time I asked God to send him home to me, I now try to thank God as many times. Which is what you must do, Carmen. You must thank as often as you ask for something.”
So when I use German, after all those asks to “Please help me speak and hear/understand it,” I am thankful, every single time I use German in any way, I feel gratitude to Mutti Buschbeck and her family.
[I]ch möchte Sie, so gut ich es kann, bitten, lieber Herr, Geduld zu haben gegen alles Ungelöste in Ihrem Herzen und zu versuchen, die Fragen selbst liebzuhaben wie verschlossene Stuben und wie Bücher, die in einer sehr fremden Sprache geschrieben sind. . . .
Leben Sie jetzt die Fragen.
From Rainer Maria Rilke, Briefe an Einen Jungen Dichter
I wish to ask you, as gently as I can, dear friend, please have patience with everything unresolved in your heart. And try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms, and like books written in a very unknown language. . . .
Live the questions now. From Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, Translated by Carmen Acevedo Butcher
“When you go outside, do you worry about your hair getting messed up in the wind? Why? Life’s short, why worry for small things?” That was a motivational speaker in my high school gym for assembly.
Painfully shy, I felt a sting of realization: Yes I do.
My hair being in place and my face being pimpleless were my primary obsessions.
There were bigger, existential worries at home, but once at school, my wavy hair not staying in place and the growing spot on my forehead wearied me with pondering.
It became a touchstone of personal growth then to be someone who went outside and felt more hair-free. It took time to outgrow this painful, critical self-consciousness. Not that How do I look is ever absent, but I’ve grown kinder in it toward me. It was fortunate that at 29 my hair turned curly overnight and more and more I just let it go and do its thing.
My appreciation for run-of-the-mill, each-one-is-different, not-too-strong winds has also grown with each passing day. I often walk after supper down the sidewalk a block or two just to listen from a spot near a friend’s house where three tall trees (no one seems to know what kind) make beautiful music high in their boughs. I love that sound of vibrant gentle winds in tree leaves. And how they dance while they play.
How each tree has a different-sized, differently shaped leaf and all together as a symphony, each tree makes a different sound when the wind blows through, and different winds blow through in various ways, so the music is always unique. Just like when you arrive in an airport in a city, and whatever language or dialect is spoken there, the collective sound of it is different from that in an airport in another city with a different language or dialect.
And I stand under trees in my neighborhood and think, How alive to be here with wind in my hair. How alive.
Lately I also think, when I walk in the marsh with the wind. How I experience the wind is how I live with my thoughts.
Sometimes on the gravel path between silent snowy white egrets and squawking geese, I gently hold my hair back, often takes several tries, the wind is so brisk and wild. So I can see better. Brisk wild wind prickles the face the eyes. Sometimes I just let it blow my hair to the moon and back and flip my head back to enable me to see ahead. When the wind is really up in the marsh, it looks like I have my hand on a Van de Graaff generator.
And sometimes it’s that amazing calm with not much wind at all. Just the occasional zephyr. Reminding me inspiration has in it spirare “breathe.” The earth breathing through the wind.
It’s not far from wind—Old English “blow”—to breath to breathing to inspiration to our thoughts blowing, the winds of the mind-self-soul-body that I breathe with and through.
When I’m in the marsh, I don’t judge the wind. I accept it as the miracle it is.
When I meditate, I don’t judge my thoughts. I accept them as the here-they-are miracle they are. They come and go.
The winds come, the thoughts come, and I let them come, and feel them without judging without stories.
What beautiful shadows on the sidewalk winds make of leaves dancing in the sun. The first movie.
The winds come, the thoughts come, and sometimes I hold my hair back gently or let the thoughts go gently, so I can rest so I can see better.
The marsh wind reminds me thoughts are weather, the earth sacred.
Increasingly volatile storms with dangerous winds, also remind me those grow with our own lack of attention to caring for earth’s sacredness.
I translated Brother Lawrence. I entered some dusty and beautiful books from the 1600s, and they brought me the gold in my shadow and new friends. Something similar happened with Cloud.
Many of these new friends I kind of knew already. If you count having read all of Mirabai Starr’s books friendship. Isn’t it though, in a way? Do you do that, too? You find one book by someone that really resonates, so you find all they’ve written and devour it?
So here are a few kind friends whom I’m grateful for and whom I met through translation. Here they are in no particular order, each in a few lines, that like the tip of an iceberg just suggest rather than represent the richness they bring into my life and into the world’s. Some hyperlinked URLs are here for those who want to delve deeper into the richness these wise friends contribute to the global community. Today, we can be grateful for their helpful videos, too, that we can find on the internet.
Mirabai Starr, whose way of living teaches me more about beyond-binary life than even any of her amazing books, acclaimed translations, creative non-fiction works, Wild Mercy, and one on-the-way.
Mark Dannenfelser of Contemplative Outreach International, a wise storyteller who also introduced me to David A. Treleaven’s Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness: Practices for Safe and Transformative Healing.
Rev. SeiFu Anil Singh-Molares of Spiritual Directors International, who brings new life to conversations surrounding translation, spiritual companionship, and trying to live a life of tranquility and kindness.
Jon M. Sweeney, who cultivates meaningful conversations in “Off the Page” at Spirituality & Practice, and in his many books–I’m joyful anticipating his and Mark Burrows’s next Meister Eckhart translation!
Lama Yeshe Rose, who shared with me about her adventures translating Tibetan scriptures, and I’ll never gladly be the same, for what I learned in two hours of our talking.
Aurelia Dávila Pratt, whose A Brown Girl’s Epiphany: Reclaim Your Intuition and Step into Your Power is a wise, powerful book, asking all of us to honor the sacred voice within us and be kind to others.
Renée Roden, a freelance reporter and writer, also member of St. Francis Catholic Worker House in Chicago, whose deep listening and writing skills inspire me, and I hope for future books from her.
Josh Patterson and Greg Farrand who interviewed me for the podcast (Re)Thinking Faith and who gave me such grace of listening and who share their own journeys in ways that give me great hope and joy.
Annmarie Sanders, IHM, who interviewed me for the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) and shared such wisdom with me about what women religious are thinking and experiencing today.
Clifford Brooks III, who publishes The Blue Mountain Review, hosts the NPR podcast Dante’s Old South, and cultivates community through The Southern Collective Experience in the best, most lasting ways.
Cassidy Hall, Kevin Johnson, and Carl McColman, who through the Encountering Silence podcast, and in countless other ways teach us all what it looks like to really, really, really pay attention and listen.
Cynthia Bourgeault, a kind friend since Cloud days, is much cherished for how she creates newness from ancient wisdom and listens into the mysteries and brings us all back joy and new ways of seeing.
Shima Bagheri Ahranjani, is also my friend because of the Cloud. She emailed me a few years ago to say she loved the Cloud. Shima is a dear friend, she has a Ph.D. in Persian literature, and she has given me one of the greatest gifts I always yearned for–friendship with someone who knows Rumi in Farsi, inside and out.
And so many many more. Making me so grateful. Little wonder. From the last section of my Introduction to Practice of the Presence: A Revolutionary Translation by Carmen Acevedo Butcher, we encounter the amazing friend Brother Lawrence, who has a way of cultivating friendships wherever he goes:
The best description I know of him is, unsurprisingly, by his good friend and mentee Joseph of Beaufort. It’s from the Profile:
The virtue of Brother Lawrence never made him harsh. His goodness made him gentle. He was a warm, welcoming person. He gave others confidence. When you met him, you felt you could tell him anything. You knew you’d found a friend. As for him, once he knew the person he was dealing with, he spoke freely and showed great kindness. He said simple things, but these were always to the point, and full of common sense and meaning. Once you got past his rough exterior, you discovered a unique wisdom, an openness of mind and a spaciousness beyond the reach of an ordinary lay brother. His depth of insight exceeded all expectation. . . . And you could consult him on anything.
On the pages that follow, you will meet this genuine soul who lives in these words. His authenticity flowed from his friendship with the Presence. His gentleness and warmth, great kindness and common sense, wisdom and openness of mind, which made him a wonderful friend, are the spiritual muscles that his practice of the presence prayer developed, over time.
Brother Lawrence is the reason this wise book has stayed alive through centuries of plague, famine, inequity, inhumanity, religious strife, wars, floods, and our ever-present human fragility. He extends friendship and wisdom to you.
Enjoy becoming friends, and spending time with him, returning now and again for conversation.
Friends have asked me to record these, so I am. You find them on my YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/CarmenAcevedoButcherPresence
You’re invited to subscribe there. I also work full-time teaching in College Writing Programs at UC Berkeley, so often there’s a few days’ wait for the recording. I’m mindful to make these pieces accessible to all, so they’re recorded and captioned.
I hope like me this Saturday morning 9/17/22, you have a day now and then in your life you can get up and not be diligent, productive, and conscientious. You can instead stay in pjs and dressing gown for some hours. Saying “nope” to getting dressed, going out. And just listen to your life. Hair askew. For me that means remembering my childhood joy when recording with a tape recorder and pretending I had a radio show. What brings you joy? I hope you can step back at times and just listen to the genuine in yourself, as Howard Thurman reminds us all.
This piece has a few French words and their definitions in English. When I read it, I omit the French words because I think it gets aurally confusing for listeners. If you want to know what’s happening word-wise in that way, though, simply visit carmenbutcher.com/blog.
Now to the piece itself. “Tumbling.” Subtitled: “Between and Among Life’s Everyday Realities.”
During the pandemic’s first summer and beyond, I translated Brother Lawrence’s Practice of the Presence. My new translation of this spiritual classic offers the complete teachings of Brother Lawrence for the first time to a wide-ranging audience, and it has been praised for its accuracy and inclusive language. Why do you think being mindful of our language use in everyday life is considered by some an essential spiritual practice?
That’s a question I hope readers will ask with me. I ask it daily. For me, everyday use of language is an essential spiritual practice.
Words matter. Mary Oliver says of writing as craft: “As a carpenter can make a gibbet as well as an altar, a writer can describe the world as trivial or exquisite, as material or as idea, as senseless or as purposeful. Words are wood” (Winter Hours). Baked into some religious writing and translating, regardless of the original’s mystical beyond-binary perspective, a rigid binary of sinner-saint, bad-good, evil-virtuous, devil-angel, wrong-right, woman-man, and others can fabricate a hierarchical world where someone is up and someone is down, someone is in and someone is out, some of us are “us” and some of us are “them.” But as Lucille Clifton reminds all of us in her poem, “All of Us Are All of Us”: “oh all of us are / all of us and / this is a poem about / Love” (The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010).
Reflecting on the friar’s graceful, grounded use of words, we remember he had no chance for a formal education and lived over forty years with a disability causing him to limp and experience constant pain. His language in my translation grounds us in love awareness, as the original language does, and reading him mimics meditation, and is itself an act of meditation, as with the Cloud of Unknowing.
Reading the friar’s organic teaching in the original Early Modern French feels like drops of dew sparkling in the sunlight on the web of wisdom. It’s an awakening experience of reflecting on the friar’s graceful, grounded, loving use of words. Their histories or etymologies affirm his kind, beyond-binary wisdom. In his emphasis on and repetition of amour,for example, he brings to mind fourteenth-century English mystic Julian of Norwich. I call him the “friar of amour.” And also, sometimes, Nic, in my mind, from his first name, Nicolas Herman.
Brother Lawrence’s intentional use of two French verbs—manqué (“fallen short”) and “tomber” (“stumble”)—teaches how we cause harm to ourselves and others, and can heal from this in the liminal loving spaciousness created by practicing the presence prayer. In a conversation the friar tells Joseph: “When I know I’ve fallen short (manqué) or been distracted, I accept it, saying: That’s typical for me. It’s all I can do. If I have not disappointed or been inattentive, but instead have done well, I thank God for it, and confess that this grace comes from them.” His choice of manqué communicates grace as embodied.
Past translations use a binary term, “failed” for manqué (“fallen short”). In the 1600s manqué is “lacking, missing, inattentive” (“lame”). The accurate “fallen short” shows the friar’s understanding of grace. Also, knowing the word’s history is profoundly illuminating, because manqué is from the Latin mancus “maimed,” as Brother Lawrence was by war.
In Letter 2 the friar uses another verb of embodiment, tomber (“to tumble”), to describe his earliest difficulties with his monkey mind and the presence prayer: “During this period Ioften fell (je tombais-I fell), but I got back up immediately.” His nondualistic eye also shows when he repeats this verb in describing to Joseph his earliest difficulties at the monastery in Paris when he regularly spent the entire time set aside for mental prayer “rejecting thoughts and then tumbling back (retomber) into these same thoughts” (“Second Conversation”).
The friar’s nondualistic view of “sin” is also crucial to understanding his beyond-binary mindset-heartset-soulset-selfset. He doesn’t see sin as a permanent or underlying badness of self, nor as a persistent consequence of something some have named “original sin.” The friar’s internal compass is set on “original blessing” instead, on God’s kindness and goodness and on the kindness and goodness of each person and of all of creation. Just once he calls himself pécheur “sinner,” from Old French pécher. In that one rare time, we are also reminded that pécher is from Latin peccāre / peccō “I walk, fall, stumble” from *ped- “foot.” So even pécheur sees that he is writing of his stumbling, doing acts of harm/péchés, and then he writes of asking forgiveness of Love and of atoning, changing, to become one of “the wisest lovers of God.”
The friar’s somatic wakefulness also shows in his use of grounded verbs like “tenir” “hold” and “attention” (“stretch toward”) Love. These show he integrated the presence prayer with his job as cook—making soup, peeling potatoes—which was work he detested (had an aversion to), and with his job as sandal maker—repairing some 100 pairs of his brothers’ sandals: “I fill myself up/m’occupe only with always holding/tenir myself in that holy presence, where I hold myself/me tiens through a simple stretching toward/attention Love and through a general and loving/amoureuxlookingagain/regard at God.”
The friar’s vocabulary is kind also in using words like “friend” / ami for God and telling us to “work gently” / travailler doucement where the root of ami is “love” and the root of doucement is “sweet.”
The friar’s kind vocabulary also imagines the relationship between humans and divinity in beyond-binary terms like reduce/réduit, a being “lead back,” the act of “returning” to Love, as conversation/entretien, “a stretching between two or more people” with Love, as contentment/“a stretching together” in Love, as being distracted/“pulled away” from Love, as perfecting Love/“doing acts of love thoroughly,” as respecting God/“looking at again,” as being absent/“away from” Love, and as knowing Love’s presence/“being right in front of.”
When you get into the weeds of Brother Lawrence’s words, you see why, as his good friend Joseph of Beaufort said in his eulogy for his friend (Last Words): “The more hopeless things seemed to him, the more he hoped”:
From this living faith came [Brother Lawrence’s] certain hope in God’s kindness, his childlike trust in God’s providence, and his total and all-embracing self-surrender into God’s hands. He did not even worry what would become of him after his death, something we will see in more detail when we consider his attitude and the feelings he experienced during his last illness. During the greater part of his life, he was not content with basing his salvation passively on the power of God’s grace and the worth of Jesus of Nazareth. Instead, he forgot himself and all his own interests, and in the Prophet’s words, he threw himself headlong into the arms of infinite mercy. The more hopeless things seemed to him, the more he hoped. He was like a rock that when beaten by the waves of the sea becomes a stronger refuge in the middle of the storm.
