Behold

God
20 M INUTES

WITH J AMES

K RUEGER

The Rev. James Krueger (right) is founder

of Mons Nubifer Sanctus in Delhi, New
York, a center for studying contemplative
Christian life. He writes regularly at the
centers website, Mons Nubifer Sanctus
(monsnubifer.org). The Rev. Will Brown
interviewed Fr. Krueger about his path to
the contemplative life and what he wants
to convey to other pilgrims.

Tell me about your spiritual journey. Where are you today, and
how did you come to be there?
I grew up in a small town in New Jersey, my mother being a Roman
Catholic convert to my fathers Presbyterianism. We attended church, a
bland service with a great organist
and some nice liturgical moments at
Christmas and Easter. My first job
was there; I remember sneaking
away to enjoy quiet time in the sanctuary.
Being inclined to creativity and not
academics, I never performed well in

school. At age 17 I was removed from

my school and placed in an institution for troubled adolescents. The
next 18 months were lost. While fishing my cats toy out from under the
refrigerator I pulled out a book on
healing prayer by the Indian Yogi
Paramahansa Yogananda. It sparked
in me a real yearning for spiritual
healing and the conviction that this is
what was needed if my life was to be
saved.
Later, a Roman Catholic teacher at
college whom I much admired
helped me to begin searching my

own tradition. I discovered there a

spirituality as compelling as the Eastern religions I was by then in the
habit of studying. I had gone to
church up until my late teens and no
one told me about the Desert Fathers
or the Cloud of Unknowing (or any
of the saints).
So at age 26 I entered a Zen
monastery where I studied, both in
residence and out, for about seven
years. The next step in training
would have been to pass through the
ceremony called, in the Japanese,
(Continued on next page)
May 24, 2015 THE LIVING CHURCH 11

Behold God
20 M INUTES

WITH J AMES

K RUEGER

(Continued from previous page)

Jukai by which one becomes Buddhist. I had already gone through

such a ceremony baptism and
belonged to Christ, so I drifted away
from Zen. By this time I had discovered Christian monasticism and
made an Episcopal monastery my
spiritual home. Though becoming a
monk in this community would not
have been a good long-term fit, I was
there as often as possible.
A suggestion of Holy Orders
planted a seed in my ear and, in a
nutshell, I was ordained to the priesthood in the summer of 2014 with the
vision of a ministry devoted to contemplative formation geared to people living and working in secular situations. A board of directors was
gathered and Mons Nubifer Sanctus
was formed. I began running retreats
in my wifes old farmhouse, and am
now serving as interim priest-incharge at Saint James Lake Delaware
with the generous blessing of the
parish to run programs at this extraordinary place.
What should the name Mons
Nubifer Sanctus connote?
Latin for Holy Cloud-Bearing Mountain, the name signifies the Holy
Mountain of Exodus, the meeting
place of God and man. The cloud of
Gods presence descended and rested
on the mountain, and Moses ascended
the mountain and entered the cloud,
there to commune with God (Ex.
24:18). There is a hermeneutical tradition running through the long history
of Christian spirituality that reads this
and similar passages, especially those
about the Transfiguration, as expressing the essence of contemplative prayer.
Whats the difference between
meditation and contemplation?
In meditation one normally focuses
on an object, such as a passage of
Scripture, an image (mental or physical), a bodily sensation, and so on.
12 THE LIVING CHURCH May 24, 2015

Contemplation, though the word is

often used today in the sense of
thinking about something, is without object. In contemplation one
empties oneself of all images, forms,
thoughts, and intellectualizations and
there, in this bareness, in this cloud
of unknowing, beholds God. The
word contemplation derives from
the Latin contemplatio, which means
to behold. Contemplation is direct
encounter, immediate and unmediated. Contemplative prayer, then, is
characterized by a pre-verbal, pre-rational intimacy with God.
To what extent can there be legitimate cross-pollination between
Christianity and non-Christian traditions? How did your experience
of Buddhism form you?
My training under Buddhist teachers
and in that monastic environment has
continued and will continue to inform,
serve, and teach me. This should not
be of much concern; all of us have had
teachers and mentors in life who have
done us a great service by giving us,
for however long, their self, their love,
and their discipline. Many people enter the Church having been formed
and disciplined in the armed forces,
for example, and this discipline can
serve them well in a Christian context. It may make them spectacular
liturgists, self-disciplined pastors,
loyal and obedient to superiors, able
to stand strong through challenging

times, skilled at motivating others.

But the Church is not the military,
nor is it Zen Buddhism. One must
search the tradition and the Scriptures, and be searched by the Spirit,
in order to discern what can be carried over from any formational experience outside the Church, even from
within, and what needs to be discarded. The past ten years have been
a process of doing this: of searching
the Christian tradition, especially its
contemplative traditions, of praying
and practicing and being a full member of the Church with its sacramental life.
You have said that the contemplative life must not be opposed
to the active life, yet one frequently encounters at the beginning of Christian mystical texts
an exhortation from the author
to the reader that what follows in
the book is not for everyone, but
only for those who are pretty far
advanced usually meaning at
least those who have had a thorough formation in monasticism.
How do you reconcile this tension?
One must have a thorough formation
not in monasticism but in the Christian life in general before entering the
contemplative life. One must be
steeped in the life of the Church
her sacraments, liturgical rites,
teachings and doctrines, saints and

Left: A warm place for conversation at Mons Nubifer Sanctus.

Scriptures. Only then, and only in the

midst of the life of the Church, can
there be a truly Christian vocation of
contemplation.
Still, a moment of true contemplation can be had at any time in ones
life, perhaps even before one enters
the Church. Many people enter the
Church precisely because they have
had some sort of contemplative, revelatory experience. Others might
glimpse it only after a long life of
Christian practice. Contemplation is
not something that we can force and
it is not a possession of either the
active or the contemplative Christian. It is Gods gift of himself to us, a
gift that he, in fact, is giving to every
single one of us all of the time. We
must trust in this. If we do not, we
will never be able to withstand a contemplative vocation with all of its
long desert paths.
I noticed that Maximus the Confessors Difficulty 10 is listed
as a seminal work on the Mons
Nubifer Sanctus website. Of course
Maximus was a great teacher of
Christian spirituality, but he also
suffered enormously, and ultimately died, defending some
pretty subtle points of orthodox
theology what many today
would regard as irrelevant minutia. Whats the connection between doctrine and devotion? Is
believing correctly important for
the spiritual life?
The Greek New Testament term so
often translated into English as belief is pisteuo. This word is not about
holding some tyrannical ideology; its
meaning is more along the lines of
trust, as in the saying I believe in
you. When we say this to another
person we are saying that we know,
through experience of them as a person, that they are worthy of our confidence. Having faith is right belief.
We begin the Christian life with faith,
even if it is only a faint glimmer.
Maximus was mutilated for mak-

ing the point that two wills divine

and human were operative in
Christ; that the human and the divine
wills were distinct yet united, working in a symphonia or harmony. In
the end he was rather a lone voice on
this point. One might wonder why
Maximus gave so much to defend
what seems on the surface a petty
point of doctrine. I believe that Maximuss authority and conviction on
this point, like Athanasiuss authority
on the divinity of the Son, not only in-

Sunday, but who might not know

where or how to begin?
I would advise such a person to begin
by attending other church-related activities that the church, or another
Christian organization, might be offering, and to work on perfecting
Christian virtue in daily activities, a
lifelong task. I would also suggest
taking time during the week to practice a personal devotion, such as
praying the offices, the rosary, etc.
Using traditional forms of prayer is

We mustnt mistake the seemingly

different circumstances around us, the
material and scientific progress we have
made, as marking a fundamental change
in the workings of the human soul.
The Rev. James Krueger

formed his spiritual life but grew out

of it.
What is the greatest spiritual
challenge or danger facing contemporary Americans?
Americans are facing a spiritual crisis
of epic proportions, and the problems that feed it are complex and difficult to pinpoint. In the end, however, the greatest spiritual dangers
facing contemporary Americans are
the same dangers that we have faced
from the beginning: the desires of the
flesh, the pride of life. We mustnt
mistake the seemingly different circumstances around us, the material
and scientific progress we have
made, as marking a fundamental
change in the workings of the human
soul. God is God and sin is sin, and
this is why the Christian spiritual tradition is perennial.
What advice would you give to
the average churchgoer who
senses that there is more to the
spiritual life than showing up on

better than trying to wing it, which

usually means just getting lost in
ones own fantasies and predispositions. If the desire to go deeper
strengthens through this then I
would suggest exploring contemplative practice under a spiritual director.
Where do you go to find renewal?
Not to sound trite but the first place
I go for renewal is to God in prayer.
Without the view of contemplation
life would be unbearable, and the
more one has this view the more one
realizes how cruel life is without it.
Similarly, I like to wander in a snowy
forest, or fish a mountain stream, or
just watch the water pass me by. My
wife, too, with all of her natural love,
is a place of refuge and renewal. I am
refreshed by serving the Liturgy. I go
to my confessor and spiritual director for renewal and challenge, and I
go on retreat at various monasteries
and hermitages. My guitar and piano
provide some renewing moments, as
do poetry and good friends.
May 24, 2015 THE LIVING CHURCH 13