Reading Brother Lawrence

By Ken Kuhlken

Brother Lawrence (c. 1614 – 12 February 1691) was born Nicolas Herman in the Lorraine region of France. After serving with the military during the Thirty Years War he entered a Carmelite monastery in Paris as a lay brother, not having the education necessary to become a cleric, and took the religious name, Lawrence of the Resurrection. He spent most his life within the monastery, working in the kitchen and repairing sandals.

Despite his lowly position, his character attracted many. He earned a reputation for experiencing profound peace, Visitors came seeking spiritual guidance. The wisdom he passed on, in conversations and in letters, would later become the basis for the book, The Practice of the Presence of God, compiled by Father Joseph de Beaufort.

Brother Lawrence wrote, "Men invent means and methods of coming at God's love, they learn rules and set up devices to remind them of that love, and it seems like a world of trouble to bring oneself into the consciousness of God's presence. Yet it might be so simple. Is it not quicker and easier just to do our common business wholly for the love of him?"

The Practice of the Presence of God is a classic of Christian literature, loved by Catholics and Protestants, praised by the likes of John Wesley and A.W. Tozer.

During a troubled time, novelist Ken Kuhlken discovered the book helped him find some peace and promised even more if he could fully understand. Reading Brother Lawrence chronicles his search for understanding.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publisher Hickey & McGee
• Release date: Oct 29, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466038066

Ken Kuhlken

Ken Kuhlken's stories have appeared in ESQUIRE and numerous other magazines, been honorably mentioned in BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES, and earned a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.His novels include MIDHEAVEN, finalist for the Ernest Hemingway Award for best first fiction book, and the Hickey family mysteries: THE BIGGEST LIAR IN LOS ANGELES; THE GOOD KNOW NOTHING; THE VENUS DEAL; THE LOUD ADIOS, Private Eye Writers of America Press Best First PI Novel; THE ANGEL GANG; THE DO-RE-MI, finalist for the Shamus Best Novel Award; THE VAGABOND VIRGINS; THE VERY LEAST; and THE ANSWER TO EVERYTHING.His five-book saga FOR AMERICA, is together a long, long novel and an incantation, a work of magic created to postpone the end of the world for at least a thousand years.His work in progress is a YA mystery.His WRITING AND THE SPIRIT advises artists seeking inspiration. He guides readers on a trip to the Kingdom of Heaven in READING BROTHER LAWRENCE.Also, he reads a lot, plays golf, watches and coaches baseball and softball, teaches at Perelandra College, and hangs out with his daughter when she comes home from her excellent college back east.

Book preview

For

This true story is especially for Cliff and Billy Torrey and Bob Williams, and for Toni Torrey, Steve Havens, Lucas and Carol Field, Ron Maxted, Barbara Williams, Maggie Askew, Pam Greenman, Kenny, Kenny Jr. and Jennifer Niedermeyer, Lane Campbell, my cousins Stevie, Kris, Wendy, Jill, Ed, Tim, Patti and Susan, my beloved kids, Darcy, Cody, Zoe and Nick, and for Laura Munger, Pam Fox, Liz, and Karen.

Contents

For

Words, The Truth, Love?, A Trip, Superman, Freedom, The End of the World, On the Road, A Big Change, A Bigger Change, Cars, Laura's Birthday, Mystery, The End of Something Else, The Light, The Real World, Raskolnikov, Me v. Everybody, Cliff and Toni, Eric v Max Von Sydow, The Danger of Watching Joan of Arcadia, In Jammin' Jim's Neighborhood, Zoe Dot Dot, Me v. God, Books, Peace, The Secret, The Commandment, Beauty, Darkness, Loco, My Girl, People, Revising, Shanghai, Eternity, These Days

Also from Hickey's Books

About the Author

This true story is especially for Cliff and Billy Torrey and Bob Williams, and for Toni Torrey, Steve Havens, Lucas and Carol Field, Ron Maxted, Barbara Williams, Maggie Askew, Pam Greenman, Kenny Jr. and Jennifer Niedermeyer, Lane Campbell, my cousins Stevie, Kris, Wendy, Jill, Ed, Tim, Patti and Susan, my beloved kids, Darcy, Cody, Zoe and Nick, and for Laura Munger, Pam Fox, and Karen.

READING

BROTHER LAWRENCE

Words

A single word can change our lives.

Some years ago, I began to think hard about the word love as in God is love and in a challenge Sylvia Curtis made.

Sylvia was an invalid, and rather crazy, given to dark moods and paranoid notions. She was the mother of my best friend Eric. I had come to help with chores and listen to her rant about whatever injustices she had recently suffered.

Her apartment was dingy and cluttered, mostly with books. Eric’s high school senior-class picture, blown up to poster size and framed, hung facing the entry door. As I entered, Sylvia's fierce green eyes taunted me. She demanded, What’s the purpose of life?

Give me a minute, I said.

To know love and serve God, she declared, with a hiss on serve.

Later she would tell me she got that answer from a priest in an orphanage where, as a teenager terrified of her own sister, she had gone to seek refuge.

Sylvia’s challenge sent me to 1 John 4:8. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

I needed to know more about love. I was single after seventeen years married. My two kids, both in their teens, were awfully troubled. And God seemed too far away.

I decided to read all I could find on the subject of love. I read C.S. Lewis, Erich Fromm, Thomas Merton, and a dozen or so other books I came across or got led to, even the Kama Sutra.

Then, supposing I knew as much about love as I ever would, I turned to reading mystery novels, since writing them had become my occupation.

The Truth

I mean to be hard on myself and dedicate these pages to honesty, even if it gets brutal.

My beloved grandmother, Mary Garfield, often assured me that a liar was the worst of all people. No doubt she recognized how liars teach us not to trust.

I believe it was Sylvia Curtis, when Eric and I talked to her about Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, who convinced me that Holden Caulfield was right to pour most of his wrath on phonies.

When Olga Savitsky and I considered founding a church, we agreed that above the entrance would hang a sign, No bullshit allowed.

After all, God is a matter of life and death.

In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig argues that being stuck is the best place for a mechanic (or a problem solver of any sort) to find himself. When we’re stuck, we come to the problem free from any preconceptions.

I mean to test his argument, because I’m stuck on the word adore.

Here’s how it happened: in the midst of a period of personal, family, and professional turmoil, I picked up The Practice of the Presence of God, by Brother Lawrence, and discovered that simply reading about this fellow from long ago delivers some peace. Not perfect peace, but closer than before. Close enough so that friends find my apparent serenity in the midst of turmoil worth remarking about.

Brother Lawrence was a layman who lived and worked, mostly in the kitchen, at a monastery in sixteenth century France. I thank God for the book by and about him.

Still, it leaves me with nagging questions and a suspicion that I may have missed the point.

In letters of encouragement and through the example of his life as described by admirers, Brother Lawrence proposed that the most blessed existence was to live in the awareness that God is always in our presence, and to act accordingly. Don't ignore him. Talk, listen, and worship him.

Brother Lawrence’s attitude troubles me, because he persistently challenges his readers to follow his example, to live in, and for, daily, hourly, continuous communion with God. And I don't.

The book’s message could be viewed as a commentary on Paul’s admonition, in Thessalonians 5:17, to pray without ceasing. Brother Lawrence attempts to show that ceaseless prayer looks and feels like constant communion and conversation with a person such as a mentor, who is always at our side, and whom we adore.

Where I'm stuck is: the Brother explains that his desire to live in faithful, relentless companionship with God began with adoration.

I wish I knew French and could read the original. But it has taken me decades to gain a meager command of Spanish. So I resort to an English dictionary, look up adore and all I find are synonyms: worship; revere, venerate; and one somewhat helpful description: deep, rapturous love. That one rings truest.

According to my vocabulary, if we adore something, we are drawn to it and resist separation. Its presence comforts, inspires, provides us with hope and meaning. The thought of losing it may terrify or leave us in despair.

I feel all that about my kids. I have felt somewhat the same about a few others, at least for a time. But I would be lying if I claimed to feel all that about God.

My problem invites the question: how can I adore God when I don’t quite know what to make of him?

I hear and read that he’s a person, and a spirit, who resides everywhere, outside and in us. I understand that if my imagination is too small to fathom God as a whole, which of course it is, I can grasp who God is by observing the qualities, nature, and actions of Christ.

But though I have read, listened, prayed, and pondered about Jesus for dozens of years, in all honesty, given my definition, I can't claim to adore him either.

Maybe if he were a woman, I could at least come closer to adoration, as I find women easier to adore. Not just for the pretty faces or figures, but for their gentler natures.

Aside from my father and son, I can’t think of a man I have adored except Eric Curtis.

Love?

The heart of the Shema, Deuteronomy 6:5, commands Israel to: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

Jesus agrees, in Matthew 22: ’Teacher,’ a disciple asks, ‘which is the greatest commandment in the Law?’ Jesus replies: 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.’

The word love has dozens of meanings, and the one that rings truest to me involves action and will rather than feeling. In M. Scott Peck’s definition, Love is the willingness to sacrifice for the sake of someone else's spiritual growth.

Since God hardly needs spiritual growth, let’s define loving God as the willingness to sacrifice when God calls us to. And at the very least, he calls us to obey his commandments.

Meaning we face yet another problem. In churches that preach seeking relationship rather than religion, we're told that lacking a relationship with God, we’ll have at best a heck of a time trying to obey. And I have seen no reason to doubt that assessment. But if the call to relationship implies we should adore, I confess that truth has escaped me until now. I mean, we all know it's possible to have a relationship with someone we don't adore.

But to have a relationship with Jesus and fail to adore him seems all wrong. Evil, maybe.

After all, I adored Eric Curtis.

A Trip

I drive a lot, across the desert to visit my kids and grandson in Tucson, and all over the West and sometimes farther on vacations and book promotion tours. One reason I drive rather than fly is, I come closest to adoring God while on the road.

Between cities, I plug in my I-pod. What goes in comes out. If I listen to a love song, these days I’ll probably wish for a loving companion. If I turn on a radio talk show, I usually want to argue. Those pastimes aren’t good for me. So, on long trips in my old Toyota I listen to hymns, gospel music and such.

As I set off on this trip, half book promotion tour and half vacation, I’m wrestling with Brother Lawrence and the question, why don’t I adore God?

I plan to drive up the West Coast, San Diego to Seattle, and stop over with Cliff Torrey in Atascadero and Bob Williams in Portland.

Lots of years ago, I attended a Billy Graham crusade with these two friends. I listened, got moved, and turned to Christ. Cliff made a profession but, as far as I know, never followed up. Bob declined the invitation.

What sent us to the crusade began with Eric Curtis.

As I pass the beach camp at San Onofre where Eric and I spent a couple of my happiest weeks, I silence my I-pod and remember.

Superman