Tags
mind, Peace, period of silence, stillness, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, turning inward, vision
Well, I feel as if I made a start yesterday. It was a small step, a toe in what seems like an ocean of tasks before I sense a concomitant clearing of mind and vision, but it was a start. With a desire to accept whatever hardship accompanies this day, I look to those whose words first energized me yesterday (see yesterday’s post).
There are many wise people recommending a period of silence in each of our days and many modes of prayer that can lead us there. In my notes from yesterday, however, there was a sentence that focused in a slightly different direction from most but engaged me quite strongly, partially because the hoped for state was not silence but stillness — a related but not matching outcome. It said simply:
If your mind is still, you can sense the peace that emanates from the earth.
As I consider this, I reflect on the appropriateness of the thought for today when it would have seemed highly inappropriate yesterday. Today peace abounds outside. The sun is shining. There is no wind, no snow or sleet or rain. (We had examples of each of those conditions yesterday.) I am confident that stepping outside to experience the light, to breathe in the fresh air, to feel the earth under my feet, to bow to the steadiness and longevity of the trees and the fragile strength of flowers who are still alive after the storms…all of this leads me to stillness. And I am renewed with confidence in this day because, you see, stillness comes from the inside, regardless of outer events.
You may think I’m contradicting myself in comparing yesterday and today as regards the source of peace and how it comes to us. I would agree but the value of assessing both experiences is the conviction that, while silence is more easily achieved when there is no noise or disturbance around (not an easy place to find sometimes), stillness does not depend on any outer circumstance but comes simply by turning inward and taking a breath. While we cannot always control noise vs. silence, we can move to stillness as long as we live, literally until our last breath.
From the mouth of Moses to the gospel of Mark the Scriptures repeat the same message about how we are to live. We hear it today, not in a long diatribe but rather a brief directive about love. When asked what is the first and greatest commandment, we can all likely reply – at least with the short form of “Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.” The deep impact of what that effort calls out from us, however, is in the almost staccato list of capacities that follows. We are to love God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind and with all our strength. In other words: Give it all you’ve got!
How fitting for those gathered in this tiny town in Maine that we should be celebrating today the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. As we endeavor to move in prayer and practice from a stance of oneness, we are frequently reminded to “put the mind in the heart” and act from there. No judgment, no self-identification, just the love that flows out of a consciousness that we are all one. While not an easy goal, it is the simplest of practices – just breathing into the sense that the heart is central to our living and its steady beating is our lifeline to love.
I was reminded again this week of how easy it is for me to walk through my days on automatic pilot and how quickly I fall out of consciousness while doing a task. Let me explain. On Tuesday my cursor disappeared from my computer screen. (I have a touchpad which I have been using for over three years.) No matter what we (I and my tech companion in the office who saves me all the time) tried, nothing would bring back that little arrow that makes things happen and allows me even the smallest success in communication. When I finally had time to visit the “Geek Squad” it took two experts to figure out that a mouse – a computer mouse, that is – might get me back up and running. Voila! It worked. Having breathed a large sigh of relief, I went back to my office and happily started to type again. Each time I needed to move the cursor for an edit or another function, I found my index finger circling around on the touchpad until I woke up to the fact that I needed the mouse to accomplish the move. My mind was on the text I was typing and the two tasks of hitting the keys and using the cursor were secondary and tertiary, just like so many other activities that I do automatically.
I heard an urgency in the voice of Macrina Wiederkehr this morning in a prayer she wrote to the God of All. Take it with you today as a plea for what we need to stay the course of courage in this fragile world.
My mind feels this morning like oil on a frying pan that has heated enough to be jumping around like the Mexican jumping beans of my childhood. The thoughts are going as fast as the ticker tape headlines across the bottom of a television screen and, because of their speed, are gone before I can latch onto their meaning at all! So I open Thomas Merton’s Book of Hours for Thursday and find this description of me:
Today is Monday, the traditional beginning of the work week for most people. For me it is always a time to “gear up” and make a list (or add to my already long one) of the things I hope to accomplish in the week ahead. Then there is the “long term list” of events that will be taking place in this season of spring into summer…As I began that litany in my mind, I realized again how cyclic life is for me and how much better I respond to it if I hold the schedule lightly so it flows like a dance rather than a race. Let me explain.
I found a startling juxtaposition this morning in the first lectionary text – the beginning of the first creation story in Genesis 1:1-19 – and a section of one of our readings under consideration today here at our contemplative “boot camp” experience. The first of this duo is the lyrical description of God’s splendid work of bringing into being the glorious creation that becomes our home. The second is, in part, a recounting of what scientists have discovered over the last quarter-century about the communication between sub-atomic particles which scientist David Bohm explains as “a deeper and more complex level of reality than we experience, an ‘implicate order or unbroken wholeness’ from which all our perceived reality derives…”
