Tag: Words Of Wisdom

Tumbling

Posted on | by Carmen Butcher

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/amoureux looking again/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.

To learn more about my new translation, see the homepage (https://www.carmenbutcher.com/) and the books page of my website (https://www.carmenbutcher.com/books.html) for how to order it.

Etymons

Posted on | by Carmen Butcher
On a blackboard we read: Latin Cantare "sing" How many words below do you find related to "cantare" for “sing”? No need to say which words, just how many you find. I’m enchanted by their chanting and that descant. it's like an incantation. Mornings on our farm, a cantata by three chanticleers woke us. The sailors are singing a charming, sea-salt-accented chanty. I recant chocolate, recant never said. Answer: 11 here. enchanted chanting descant incantation cantata chanticleers charming accented chanty recant recant.
Latin “cantare” means “sing”

Just wondering what would happen, if, in a world of disinformation, we went back more often, as we do for morning coffee or tea, to the ur-origins of words, and were more mindful of these? What if we cared about word origins or etymons? That kind of wondering always leads me to talking about a favorite mindful practice of looking up word etymologies, or word histories.

If you like even just the sound of “etymons,” we’re immediately friends. If the words Oxford English Dictionary make your heart sing, same here. If it makes your day, seeing in the OED that etymon comes from the ancient Greek ἔτυμος for “true,” I get it.

Which takes me back to the dyslexia I grew up with, undiagnosed until self-diagnosed in my late forties. What became for me over decades a kind of mindfulness practice began in a life-altering disability. Not unlike Brother Lawrence, Hildegard, Julian of Norwich, and other friends I’ve spent much time with, deep in their words, translating. All had disabilities and/or severe illnesses that they met with contemplative attention and intention.

How I found out was helping a student with what I thought was just life, when he said, “Thanks so much. You’re the first teacher to be patient with me with my problems. I just got diagnosed with dyslexia.” Lightbulbs went off for me. All those difficulties reading my whole life, explained. So I began reading about dyslexia and also discovered poet Philip Schultz’s struggles which resonated, as described here.

Looking up word histories slowly imbued with weight and less instability the always-moving-on-the-pages letters and words, and it became more possible to read with less trauma and less stress and more clarity of comprehension.

And for that I can largely thank my favorite teacher in college, Wilson Hall.

Mr. Hall was calm. He was funny. He was brilliant. He saved my life.

I was so shy. I had to make a certain GPA to keep my scholarships, or go home. I worked as a secretary to buy books. One religion teacher required we buy ten expensive books. I don’t think he ever considered that some of us could not afford that.

For many reasons, then, such as being there on scholarship and not wanting to be sent back home for questioning the authorities around me, I did not speak up in class. One day in German, Wilson said something, and I was curious, so later I looked it up. I discovered that what he said and what I found didn’t match up. I thought that was interesting and nothing more. Words fascinated me, even though they had also caused me such grief.

The next day in class, Wilson said, “Did anyone look up [whatever it was]?” I said nothing but I had. The silence spun out. Then Wilson looked disappointed, so I inched my arm up with an awkward hand at the top.

“Carmen?” his face brightened. “What did you find?”

Oh, no, I couldn’t say, You were wrong yesterday. So I kept looking studiously down at my desk and said very quietly and as a mere statement of fact: “I found out that [whatever it was I had found out].”

Wilson smiled. I heard it in his voice, so looked up to see. He was beaming. “What Carmen is not saying is that she looked it up, and discovered I got it wrong yesterday, and what she just said, is right.” Then he talked a long time about questioning everyone and everything and looking things up as my brown face warmed and reddened, or so it felt.

That experience blew my world open as far as learning goes. I’d never had a teacher say they got something wrong AND had looked it up, etc.

Wilson talked all the time about word histories, and I asked him during one year of many of my knowing little sleep, daily painful anxiety, and severe depression, all undiagnosed, if he would let me take an independent study course in etymologies with him. He said yes. After I graduated, he made that into an official class.

Because Wilson drew all these mountain peaks in class one day on the board, and put different-looking words on top of them, and then went underneath and showed how they were all connected by a same root underground. From that moment, I was gone down that rabbit hole. Forever.

Wilson also liked to ask how many pillars there were in the most passed by building on campus, and NO one could ever say how many. He would look out the window all the time and muse and kind of talk to himself about Emerson and Thoreau and Whitman, his favorites, and say to us who were behind him in the room: “Just remember. When they pass around the purple kool-aid, be the ones who don’t drink it.”

You never ever forget such a teacher. So thankful for Wilson Hall. He later went to Emory in Integrative Studies for a Ph.D. He went from Mr. Hall to Dr. Hall to Wilson for me.

To return to the chalkboard meme above, we read: Latin Cantare “sing” / How many words below do you find related to “cantare” for “sing”?

I’m enchanted by their chanting and that descant. It’s like an incantation. Mornings on our farm, a cantata by three chanticleers woke us. The sailors are singing a charming, sea-salt-accented chanty. I recant chocolate, Carmen never said.

Answer: 11 here. enchanted chanting descant incantation cantata chanticleers charming accented chanty recant Carmen. All have roots in Latin cantare “sing”–of course I only know some of these connections like accent and charming because . . . I looked them up!

Thank you again to all who guessed earlier on social media!

MIX

Posted on | by Carmen Butcher

Thank you to Sean for adding a “Contact” block here to my website and under “About,” so if anyone wants to ask me onto a podcast, to lead a retreat, or give a workshop, you can easily get in touch.

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When I was growing up, good women were seen-not-heard, so lately life’s been an adjustment. To be asked onto podcasts as Practice of the Presence was birthed, not only to be asked about Brother Lawrence but also about my own journey, has been both YAY! and WTF. In for a dollar, in for a gold brick. . . .

You’re invited to listen in. Josh Patterson and Greg Farrand–Josh and Greg–on (Re)Thinking Faith got me to talking about everything. Listen here to the (Re)Thinking Faith conversation we enjoyed. It’s magical what active listening will do. Thank you both! But imagine being asked what you think about taboo topics growing up when a part of you, despite all your True Self work and Shadow work, is still a wounded 5-year-old. Much loved, but still 5 and still recovering.

To talk freely as I did with Josh and Greg tells you A LOT about Josh and Greg. And their wise kindness. Because I suffer from, live with, and try to practice-the-presence my way through (also breathwork-my-way, see-a-therapist, chant, listen-&-be-kind-to-others, and go-for-walks) through severe anxiety.

This severe anxiety is like an inner blindness so real it’s hard to describe to others. I don’t remember saying this and only know because Josh and Greg later posted this cool computer-coding meme with a quote by me: “Christianity has a lot of beautiful treasures that have been buried under binaries….and binaries rarely work.” It’s here on IG @practiceofthepresencebook.

Kind listening draws out of you what you didn’t know lay in you. That is such a powerful experience to have about the ocean of interdependence we all swim in, live, move, and have our being in, and that includes with all creatures, even and especially the roly-poly walking on the sidewalk that I try not to step on.

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Kind listening also happened on Encountering Silence with Cassidy Hall, Kevin Johnson, and Carl McColman. Afterwards, when they posted two beautiful memes with my quotes on them, I learned I said: “I’ve always had a special relationship with trees. They feel like the keepers of silence.” And “I was able somehow with the silence to hear the self compassion.” Those are here and here. In my experience lately, I’ve decided when others actively listen to you and you dare risk being open yourself, prayerfully and mindfully, it’s not unlike walking out into the listening forest, silence embracing you with its ancient loving openness and anything truly can happen then. Listen here to the Encountering Silence conversation.

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It’s easier to say to students: “Get out of your comfort zone. You only live once. Be open to discovery in my class. Invest in yourself. Honor your voice.” Than it is to do it yourself. This summer I helped do interviewing for the Mystics Summit for The Shift Network. With dyslexia and anxiety, I made notes upon notes and did a mountain of research to ensure I pronounced names and words right and could listen well.

I also reached out to a stranger-now-a-good-friend, Emily, who said yes to helping me get the word out about the friar and his wise teachings in Practice of the Presence. For three months Emily (also a busy, successful playwright) taught me SO much about getting out of my comfort zone, answering my questions with the following: “Yeh–you can’t do that on your desktop–IG’s a mobile app–gotta do it on your phone.” And “Yeh–you can do whatever you want with that.” And “Just be authentic.” (The last two were advice for how to handle an IG Live Launch for the book.)

Because of Emily, I had the courage to learn how to use Canva and Headliner on my own. Truth is, having things go wrong is part of the process, and just pressing this and that and trying again gently, as another friend recommends, is really helpful.

With Canva and this newfound courage, I began this month to make and post on social media my own mixes of my translation with art, including choosing colors, backgrounds, fonts, and more. I have a plan. I started at the beginning of Practice of the Presence, picking quotes that stand out to me as helpful or beautiful, and it’s been very creatively fulfilling. In fact, it’s a lot like lectio divina. Focusing on individual words and also how they work together. Meditating on them as I create them. It’s satisfying to my soul.

With such friendships, old and new, old (middle-aged) and young, I also found the courage to start adding videos to my YouTube Channel (at 100 followers I can customize the URL for it). Until then here is my YouTube Channel’s bitly link (it’s bit.ly/CarmensYouTube).

I am thankful over and again because all summer I have experienced how active listening is what we most need, and I rededicate myself daily to trying to be an active listener.

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So many people have written or messaged me to say how much my translation of Brother Lawrence means to them, and for that, I can say, My prayers were that the humble friar’s wisdom might be kindness and calmness in the world as well as gently disruptive, helping us all become more embodied compassion.

One kind friend posted a quote on Facebook that perhaps I said in the (Re)Thinking Faith podcast (I’m not sure where he found it or heard it): “I just want to be as good of a human as my cat, Tao, is a cat.” And this is true. He said, “That was such a gift to me this morning.” And my heart is full with such kind community.

I’m also exhausted from the launch activities. But being kind to myself and recovering. You never knew or rather I never knew that publishing a book these days has as much to do about getting-the-word-out in our Horton-hears-a-Who-world as it does about countless hours invested in researching, writing, and revising it. To the amazing friends, launch team members, who helped me do this, thank you again.

For an introvert with an extrovert interface, that kind of getting-the-word-out does not come naturally. Even with such a good thing as the friar and his work. You know, introverts prefer communing with ancient spiritual classics and this morning’s snowy white egrets in the marsh.

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Yes, this blog is a mix. Life is also a mix. Grateful for the mix and the intermixing of it all.

I’m so grateful for my family and my friends and for the kindness in the world.

PRESENCE

Posted on | by Carmen Butcher

Brother Lawrence’s Practice of the Presence is the calmest book I know. Because it embodies the wisdom of the calmest person I never met. Except through translation. Which is as good as meeting a person in real life. Almost.

That’s why I put his writings first. His spiritual maxims and his sixteen letters. That’s not always been the case. One reader mentioned that to me already, saying thank you for putting the friar first. Sometimes the additions by his good friend Joseph the priest are put first. My editor left it up to me. I had to reflect and decide. Finally I realized, I started with his voice, his writings, when translating. To get to know him. See who he is, so I’ll start the translation with him too. Center him and his voice.

Brother Lawrence’s voice is not one that would ordinarily be centered, not 330 years ago and not today. His is the voice of the poor and the marginalized.

I began reading Practice of the Presence in May 2020 in the original French, from the National Library of France. Thank you, Bibliothèque nationale de France! What I found was a down-to-earth mystic whose wise and loving spirit, juicy calmness, and beyond-binary mindset was somewhat out of step with the translations beside me that were leaning more into thisness-or-thatness.

I also found a confusing mess at times. Manuscript-wise, the original Practice of the Presence is a complicated artifact. I won’t go into details. The bulk of it is solid gold. But some spots cause head-scratching, especially where editor Joseph of Beaufort was working with the text. These don’t change the meaning of the original work, but do make its translation more challenging for a conscientious soul.

Add to that this. Brother Lawrence has been so loved over the centuries that the hundreds irresistibly drawn to translate him have proliferated a veritable Titanic of versions. Published traditionally, via Create Space, and often piecemealed into devotionals by those who love the friar’s calmness, a number of translations over the years also used an 1897 Victorian-era public domain translation. Through much handing-down over the centuries, the beloved friar’s work has been changed, rather like happens in the Telephone Game, where a whisper of “I love you. Do you like purple?” ends up after it goes around the circle of people as possibly, “Pick this or that. I hate eggplant.”

It’s impossibly hard to describe the high traffic this tiny book has known. Because of love. It’s like The Velveteen Rabbit.

It all got me to thinking, though.

So after last week’s activities—an IG Live (!) Launch with my friend Cathy Payne Anderson (posted on my YouTube Channel), Rhiannon Grant’s TikTok review, the mention of Brother Lawrence and his new translation in a sermon given at a Duke Divinity Faculty retreat, a Religion News Service interview “Carmen Acevedo Butcher gives medieval mysticism a Gen Z reboot” on August 25, 2022 with Renée Roden, and a Twitter sighting of the translation at the friar’s Église St-Joseph des Carmes on rue de Vaugirard (thanks to Dr. James K.A. Smith and family who brought Brother Lawrence home), and other exhilarating experiences that gifted me happy tears more than once—I sat down on the bed last night, good-exhausted, and counted pages in my translation.

Why was I counting pages? To return to that baseline of calmness that got me into this at the start. You know, numbers can be very soothing. Counting, and writing the page numbers down on three 5″ x 8″ index cards, I discovered percentages to help me better understand this translation. To be more accurate, I’d need to go into the manuscript and count words but don’t have the interest in that at the moment.

In my translation of Practice of the Presence—the first to offer the complete teachings of Brother Lawrence to a wide-ranging audience—here is who wrote what and how much space it takes up:

Solely written by Brother Lawrence: 46 pages

Solely written by Joseph of Beaufort: 41 pages

Sort of written by both Brother Lawrence & Joseph: 18 pages

That’s 44% written by Brother Lawrence (spiritual maxims and letters), 39% written by Joseph (note to the reader, profile, last words), and 17% we could say was sort of posthumously written by them “together” since this includes the conversations that Joseph took such careful notes on during visits with the friar, plus the heart of Brother Lawrence, a summary of Brother Lawrence’s teachings taken from his writings.

However, in the past, the priest Joseph’s more institution-oriented, dogma-conscious 39% has often dominated the book rather than centering Brother Lawrence and his 44%. Why is that? Likely inertia, as that was how it first came out (though that was about practicality, as we’ll see). Also, not having access to the original books would have been a hurdle.

Here’s how Brother Lawrence was first published by Joseph: In 1692’s 1st edition part 1, we find first Joseph’s note to the reader, Joseph’s eulogy (in my translation as last words), the friar’s spiritual maxims, and the friar’s letters. Then in 1694’s 1st edition part 2, we find Joseph’s the ways (in my translation as profile), conversations, and the heart of Brother Lawrence (originally called “the practice of the presence”).

Joseph’s friend Brother Lawrence died at seventy-seven in 1691, so it makes sense that a year later, so soon after the friar’s death, that in 1692 Joseph first put his Note to the Reader, then his Eulogy/Last Words as an introduction, to honor his friend and explain the Spiritual Maxims and Letters included next. When a couple of years later in 1694 Joseph published The Ways/Profile, then their Conversations, and then the Heart of Brother Lawrence, again it makes sense to introduce everyone to Brother Lawrence through a Profile of his life first.

In the past, it seemed to me, that opening eulogy had been weighing down the calm, joyful life of the evergreen spirit of the friar’s wisdom. I also wanted to center that unshakable joy he created by practicing the presence, come what may, as he said.

To try to get at the friar’s life more, those publishing Brother Lawrence’s teachings have in the past pulled out Joseph’s works and kept and published only the friar’s spiritual maxims and letters, or their shared conversations, or some combination of these (sometimes without all sixteen letters), calling that Practice of the Presence, with no note to say what was omitted. But truly Practice of the Presence wouldn’t have existed without Joseph. Plus his biographies of the friar and other additions contribute significantly to our understanding of Brother Lawrence, and are a frame I’m thankful to have. They are lovingly made.

My translation is so drawn to the friar—who came from a very marginalized background in 17th-century France—that it is also drawn to center him and his voice. Doing that also decenters his death to make room for centering his life.

While Joseph as a bonafide clergyman had to consider crossing t’s and dotting i’s, and could not take a step without remembering the volatile Quietist controversy, the friar is simply with the Presence—as he says, Come what may. Come what may for him included soldiering, being a prisoner of war, disability, daily pain for five decades, failure as a footman, severe anxiety, joining the monastery as a lay brother, living through climate crises and plague, and doing kitchen work he detested.

But ever hopeful, ever evolving-in-love Brother Lawrence says in one letter: “We don’t need to shout out to do this [practice of the presence]. God is closer to us than we may think.”

And if “God” as a word doesn’t work for you here, you’re invited to pick a word that does, or do whatever else works for you. “Love is closer to us than we may think.” “Self-compassion is closer to us than we may think.” “Loving others is closer than we may think.” “Divinity is closer to us than we may think.” “Seeing the truth of reality is closer to us than we may think.” “The True Self is closer to us than we may think.” And on.

May we know the friar’s “you don’t need to shout” in our dna. May we all know this deep Love, together.