In the Bible there is one book which seems to link closely with some of the themes we regularly encounter in teaching about mindfulness: Ecclesiastes.

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In many ways it's quite a strange book even to be in the Bible. In places the 'wise man' who features is extremely gloomy and his assessment of life seems decidedly grim. 

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But there's more to it than that. First, we need to keep in mind that no book in the Bible should be seen purely in isolation. Each stands within the structure and framework of the whole. This is especially true of the books of the Old Testament (which, out of respect for Jewish tradition, these days people are increasingly calling 'the Hebrew Scriptures'). Ecclesiastes, as well as being just one book in the whole library, is also the central book of the three-book section in the Hebrew Scriptures. It follows the book of Proverbs (and in some sense complements or even corrects it), and is itself followed by (and complemented by) the book of Job. 

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Each of the three offers valuable guidance for the formation of our own outlook on life, and for the way we live.

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Put very briefly, and rather over simplifying things:

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The wise author of the Book of Proverbs can be seen as suggesting that if we seek to live according to God's will and if we work hard to get everything right, then life will always go well for us.

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In Ecclesiastes, the man sometimes called 'the critic' (or even the 'cynic') says, 'That sounds fine, but we can all see that things don't always work out. The race doesn't always go to the swift. The battle doesn't always go to the strong.' Life is unpredictable. In fact, things very often don't work out. We can't be sure of anything — except that we will all eventually die and be forgotten. More generally, this world-weary man can be seen as challenging what some call the 'myth of religious self-fulfilment'. This is the belief, one we often hold unconsciously, that if only we can get things right, everything will go well for us. Indeed, that if we get on-side with God, God will sort things out for us, and do so pretty much on our terms! 

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In Job we are given a wider perspective: We can't understand the tragedies of life, but we can't understand life's beauties and wonders either. God’s ways are beyond us, but he has all things in his hand. For our part, we are called to hold ourselves open to trusting in him. And that will include letting go of some of our efforts to understand and sort things out for ourselves. 

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Of course that's only one part of the teachings of the Hebrew Scriptures, but it's an important contribution and we can see how it ties in with key elements in mindfulness practice. And like everything in the Hebrew Scriptures, for all their beauty and wisdom, they find their fulfilment only in Jesus. 

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The short video to the right comes from the Bible Project. It's just six minutes long and is brilliantly put together. It gives a wonderful overview of Ecclesiastes. From the point of view of this course and of mindfulness practice, one of the wise insights of the critic, the hardened cynic is, 'Yes, life is unpredictable and the future often looks bleak; but nevertheless, while we can, let's celebrate and enjoy the good things of life. Let us always respect God's laws, but live in the moment, valuing the wonderful things that will come our way, even the simple things of a good meal, a talk with a friend, the smile of a child — while yet trying not to cling to these things.' And can we see that in this way we are somehow opening ourselves to the inflow of God's saving grace? 

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Mindfulness is not in itself the answer. But it can help to hold us open to receiving the answer that we can't make up for ourselves, but can only come from God as his gift.  

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'A School of Unlearning' 

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We live in a disordered world. We can all see that. And from that disordered world we have, each one of us, picked up lots of false beliefs and unhelpful attitudes. We have all also, each one of us, to some extent ‘bought into’ those beliefs and attitudes. These false beliefs and attitudes can, very probably will, hold us back from being who we are meant to be, that is, from who God want us to be. Just as importantly, insofar as we have bought into those false beliefs and attitudes, we will tend to perpetuate or even to add to that disorder. We will cause or perpetuate disorder in the world around us. 

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How do we understand all this? And what can we do about it? 

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Here I can only sketch a brief outline of one way of seeing things. It begins by looking back to the first few pages of Genesis and the Garden of Eden. We don't have to see those early pages of Genesis as offering either science or history as we now understand them. That was never their real purpose and we needn't imagine that it was. These pages speak, not of how the world or humankind came into being, but rather of the status of the world before God and the status and role of humankind within that world. Those early pages tell us that, at his initiative and by God's gift, the world has both order and purpose. Moreover, within that well-ordered world, humankind has a special status and is called to a very particular role, a particular task.

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First, humanity is created 'in the divine image' — and what higher status could there be than that? Secondly, on behalf of all creation, humanity is called to exercise royal priesthood. Humanity is called to co-operate with God in the stewardship of creation, something which will include furthering and developing the good order God has established. In and through the exercise of that priesthood humanity would find its fulfilment, indeed, each one of us and humanity as a whole would find their fulfilment. 

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Of course things went wrong. We read about that just a couple of pages further on, in Genesis chapter three. How is that to be understood? Here's one way of seeing it. This understanding goes back to the very early days of the church and was taught by some of the greatest theologians. As they saw it, Adam and Eve were indeed given the extraordinary status of being made 'in the divine image', and yet they were told by God not to eat of 'the tree of the knowledge of good and evil'. (The names 'Adam' and 'Eve' mean respectively, 'Humankind' and 'Life'.) The theologians I mentioned earlier said was that Adam and Eve were invited to trust in God and that it would be through such trust that they would find their fulfilment. But rather than trust him, however, they chose to trust in themselves. Their thought was, 'We'll decide what's good for us. We'll sort this out for ourselves.' But because they didn't know what was good for them, their decisions were poor — to put it very mildly. This led to chaos and suffering. Among those early theologians, one of the very greatest, St Irenaeus, made an excuse for them: they were immature, and so didn't have the wisdom to understand a whole range of things: God and his purposes, themselves and their own nature, the way the world has been ordered, the principles on which the world runs. 

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Irenaeus and later theologians also argued that had Adam and Eve only listened to God, in due course, at the appropriate time, God would have given them all that they desired. Instead, having jumped the gun, they set themselves at odds with the natural order of things, and consequently, got themselves (and the rest of us) into all kinds of trouble, all kinds of suffering. 

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The central issue is this: Adam and Eve are presented as deciding for themselves what would best for them. And since then we have all done the same. Moreover, once disorder had entered and become established in the world, the various 'pressures' which that disorder puts on us makes it all-but-impossible not to get caught up in that disorder and indeed, beyond that, to find that we ourselves are contributing to the disorder, perpetuating it, and indeed, making things even worse.

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The recovery process was long and hard. God was faithful to his initial intention of having a people of his own, a people living within his promised blessing. Indeed his promise and intention was that all people should live within his blessing. To this end he called a series of people through whom he could work for the ultimate wellbeing of all. He worked through Abraham and Moses and a whole, long succession of men and women. Each was to be a servant and God's chosen-people were called to be a servant people, a people through whom the world (not only all humanity but also all creation) might enjoy God's intended blessings. 

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All was fulfilled in and through the work, ministry, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. He was the ultimate servant, through whom the Father's plan was accomplished. This was nothing other than the reconciliation of all things with the Father and the renewal of good order within humanity and within creation. Jesus broke down the 'dividing walls'. And as part of that, he also brought into being a whole new order of life, namely the resurrection life, that life which is already a sharing in the life of eternal the Kingdom.

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Of course it doesn't quite look like that to us: disorder and division are still more than evident all around us. One way of understanding this is to see that we are not simply offered the new life 'on a plate', as something we receive passively; rather we are given it — and it is indeed a gift. It is not something we deserve or have earned. But — and this usually comes as something of a surprise, even as a shock — it is integral to sharing Christ's life that we share his work of reconciling the world with his Father and restoring it to its original purpose. The Son's work and our own call are perhaps best understood like this:

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Faced with a suffering and disordered world, the eternal Son chose to work for the world's healing and its restitution to fulness of communion with God. We, for our part, are called to share the Son's own life, that is, to live within his own relationship both to the Father and to the created realm, but to do that means sharing in his work. We are called to live within his work of healing the world. And being involved in that work will entail for us a certain suffering, just as it did for him. and yet, the Holy Spirit himself — who is the Son's own Spirit, the Spirit who mediates the Son's relationship to his Father, and who also mediates both the Father's and the Son's s relationship to the world — it is the Holy spirit himself who strengthens and enables us to share in that work and to endure that suffering. 

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The life of the Church, the Christian community, can be seen as the setting, the context, within which we can come to understand how God is at work in the world and can also come to learn how to live within the Son and share his work. These are two aspects of that learning, that understanding: first, we are learning about God and his work on the world's behalf, and secondly, we are learning the practical skills needed to share in the Son's work. One way of understanding the relationship between the learning about and learning the skills, so to see our Christian formation as a kind of apprenticeship. It is not enough just to learn about (which is the kind of thing proper to an academic course or a schoolroom). Practical skills are essential too.     

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In the New Testament we can even see Paul's letters as looking at things in this way. They begin (most of them at least) with an account what God has done in Jesus — i.e., we learn about God; and then Paul goes on to tell us how as a consequence we should live; this entails us taking up the challenge to learn, step by step, the skills we need to respond effectively to God's initiative on our behalf.

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Moving from St Paul to someone very influential in the later history of the Church, we can pick up a theme in the massively influential major work of St Benedict (AD480-548). He is seen as so influential that he is considered Patron of Europe.) In his celebrated Monastic Rule, he speaks of the monastery (and by extension every Christian community) as a School for the Lord's service. Without for a moment wanting to criticise St Benedict, we can also see the life of the Christian community, monastic, parish or whatever, as a School of Unlearning ... We are unlearning those habits of thought and action which we have picked up from the fallen world and relearning that dependence upon God and his wisdom, love and goodness, which Adam and Eve (see above) first doubled. 

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Or perhaps it would be better still to see our Christian communities as being, at their best, Schools of re-learning: we are re-learning trust in God and in his endless goodwill towards us.