Being Mindful, Being Christian: An guide to mindful discipleship

By Joanna Collicutt, Roger Bretherton and Jennifer Brickman

What is mindfulness? And should we as Christians be mindful? Mindfulness programmes are increasingly being used for issues as wide-ranging as depression, pain, employee engagement, and character development, and many Christians are wondering what to make of all this. In this book, experienced psychologists explain what is meant by "being mindful", help readers to view mindfulness more broadly than the context of Buddhism in which it is often framed, and profile the rich Christian tradition of mindful-like practice. By bringing a Christ-centred approach to mindful awareness, the authors demonstrate how to apply this practice to discipleship and spiritual growth. Readers are equipped to decide the extent to which they wish to learn and practice mindfulness, to approach it without fear, and to draw on the good within it to develop their relationship with Jesus.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Monarch Books
• Release date: Nov 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9780857217868

Joanna Collicutt

Revd Dr Joanna Collicutt is a Lecturer in the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality at Ripon College, Cuddesdon and a Supernumerary Fellow at Harris Manchester College, Oxford. She has published many academic papers and several books for a popular Christian readership, including 'Self-esteem: The Cross and Christian confidence' (1992/2001); 'Meeting Jesus' (2006); 'Jesus and the Gospel women' (2009); and 'When you pray' (2012).

Book preview

Being Mindful

The Mindful God

In the beginning

Before human beings discovered mindfulness, God was mindful.

The mindfulness of God is attentive and watchful; it is open and hospitable to what it encounters, rather than defensive and reactive; it describes without rushing to judgment. In many ways it is very like human mindfulness. But it is also profoundly different. After all we’re talking about God here: For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts (Isaiah 55:8–9 NKJV).

God’s mindfulness comes before all human attempts at mindfulness (just as his love and forgiveness come before all human attempts at love and forgiveness). It is first: through it all mindful creatures were brought into being. It is fundamentally creative and re-creative. Healthy human mindfulness is a participation in this creative and re-creative mindfulness of God. The world could not have been brought into being without the mindfulness of God, and it could not continue to be sustained without the mindfulness of God.

God thinks therefore I am

The Old Testament links the mindfulness of God to his loving care of human beings. The psalmist asks What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? (Psalm 8:4 ESV). On the face of it this verse seems to be posing the question of why God would bother with puny little creatures like us, but some scholars have seen something deeper here. They suggest that the psalmist is instead pondering what it means to be human – what is man?, and he comes to the answer that you are mindful of him. That is, we are human precisely because God is mindful of us! If God were to stop keeping us in mind we would cease to be. God’s mindfulness is what gives us our souls. Elsewhere in the psalms, God’s constant non-judgmental scrutiny is linked with the very act of forming the psalmist as a developing foetus: My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be (Psalm 139:15–16).

---

Where Did it Come From?

Hebrew and Greek

In the Hebrew Old Testament the word for be mindful is zākar and in the Greek version of the Old Testament (which dates from the third century bc) the word is mimneskomai – the same word used by the thief on the cross in the Greek New Testament.

In the Old Testament God’s mindfulness is not just psychological; it is ontological. This means that when God is mindful things come into existence and when he ceases to be mindful of something it ceases to exist.

Hebrew poetry often uses parallelisms, which means that it says the same thing twice but using different words. This helps us to work out what the words mean. In the case of Psalm 8 we find the parallelism What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? This tells us that being mindful means something very like caring for. The care for word is pāqad, which can mean visit, and so it has overtones of hospitality, something that is also characteristic of human mindfulness.

---

---

Yes… but…

Is it right to use the word mindful to describe God?

The Jews had their own understanding of mindfulness before Buddhism developed its version. There are similarities and differences between them.

In Judaism mindfulness is primarily a divine attribute, closely related to God’s loving-kindness (hesed), but one that human beings can emulate. In addition to being contemplative it is also active; this more active aspect of mindfulness corresponds well to a psychological state called flow.

The mindfulness of Christ reflects the mindfulness of the God of the Old Testament. So, while Christian understandings of mindfulness are later than Buddhism, their origin in Judaism is older. And of course Christian mindfulness is older than modern psychotherapy. There is a sense in which we had it first, and we need to be confident about acknowledging this.

---

The Hebrew word that is translated mindful in English Bibles has a range of meanings that include remember, keep in mind, call to mind, be concerned about, and – interestingly – meditate. It describes a kind of loving attentiveness, a calling to consciousness – as when we remember a friend’s birthday and communicate our remembering by sending a card. It’s what we mean when we say to someone who is going through a difficult time, I’ll be thinking of you.

God asserts that his basic nature is to be mindful of his people: Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands (Isaiah 49:15–16a). Jesus himself describes this divine mindfulness in one of his parables: all the time the prodigal son was away in a far country his father was mindful of him.

The hospitable God

When the watchful and attentive father of the prodigal is finally reunited with his son he runs with open arms to greet him and hosts a great party. This is a picture of the hospitable God of Psalm 23 who not only feeds and guides the psalmist, but also lays a table for him and anoints him as an honoured guest. Psalm 23 ends with a statement of trust in God’s goodness and loving-kindness. It sums up God’s starting attitude to human beings – an attitude of love that treats us as if he is pleased with us even when we don’t look very worthy of this approval. It shows itself in compassionate action – an opening of the arms and the heart that makes you vulnerable to being hurt, abused, and rejected. Reflecting with wonder on this attribute of God, Paul writes: God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).

Hospitality, openness, and refraining from judging are key aspects of human mindfulness. The practitioner is encouraged to take a hospitable attitude to whatever thoughts and experiences arise, to consider them as they are, without evaluating them or getting bogged down in analysing them. Just as the father of the prodigal resists the urging of his older son to judge, the practitioner of mindfulness aims to resist the habit of evaluating. Of course there are times and places for judging and evaluating, but what is distinctive about mindfulness, and extraordinary about God, is that judgment is suspended for a while.

Jesus often talks about this suspension of judgment in terms of seed time and harvest. At the end of time the productivity of the fig tree will be evaluated, but for now we should Leave it alone (Luke 13:8); the wheat will be separated from the weeds but until then let both grow together (Matthew 13:30). We have to resist our human tendency to knee-jerk reactions and the rush to judgment because this is not God’s way. Jesus taught that right up until the one and final judgment God gives the benefit of the doubt.

Jesus, remember me

Jesus didn’t only teach this; he showed it in his acceptance of a dying thief who turned to him at the end of a life of crime (Luke 23:42). We are inclined to be cynical about deathbed conversions; they seem to be too easy – a way of getting the benefits of heaven even after a lifetime’s sinning. Yet somehow God sees it differently. Indeed, this is one way in which my thoughts are not your thoughts. Jesus saw something in the man who hung beside him, perhaps something missed by others. Whatever it was, it was enough for Jesus to give him the benefit of the doubt and to invite him into paradise.

---

By the Book

Be opened

The whole of this chapter focuses on the Bible, but if you are eager for more take a look at Mark 7:24–37.

This is the account of the meeting between Jesus and a foreign woman on foreign soil. At first Jesus does not seem inclined to offer this woman the hospitality of his table, appearing to judge her on the basis of her ethnicity. But in response to her words he sets this first instinct aside and is able to see her simply as herself without any further evaluation. Jesus’ mindfulness of the woman is depicted as a kind of opening up.

It is significant that he goes on from this to heal another foreigner, this time a deaf man, with the words Ephphatha – "be opened". As Jesus touches this man in a deeply intimate way it’s as if he is passing his own recent opening up on to him.

To be healed by Jesus is to be opened – to become hospitable like Jesus. This is an insight we can bring to reading the Bible. To read the Bible mindfully is to read it with an openness to the healing presence of Jesus

---

The thief asks Jesus to remember him in that same word that is translated be mindful of in Psalm 8. We can see from this that the thief is asking Jesus to do more than keep him on the radar. He’s asking for mindfulness – for loving, hospitable attention. And he gets it. Just as in Psalm 8, something creative is going on: it is through Jesus’ mindfulness that this individual turns from thief into human person. Jesus’ mindfulness gives him his soul. The broken pieces of his life are gathered up and he is made whole – literally re-membered.

We might be tempted to think that what saved the thief on the cross was his insight into his sins and his decision to turn to Christ. We might be tempted to think that what saved the prodigal son was his insight into his sins and his decision to go home to his father. In a way we would be right to think this because our faith does save us, as Jesus told people again and again. Yet something more fundamental is at work: the grace of