onehouse

The Role of the Mantra

A nice little article here on the role of the mantra. Still not sure why some people freak out about that word but ah well. 

Wishes and

This weekend away, I indulged in cheesemeister Michael Bay's The Island and got exactly what I expected  - things that blow up, bad dialogue, and a possibly interesting concept reduced to well, things that blow up and bad dialogue. I did like this line though:

Lincoln Six-Echo: What's "God"?
McCord: Well, you know, when you want something really bad and you close your eyes and you wish for it? God's the guy that ignores you.

Dear God

Like Post Secret but no stamps required:

Dear God.

The heart of the world.

When I took a short class on centering prayer, the teacher said that, from time to time, it is possible to settle the soul long enough to get a glimpse at what she called "the heart of the world". I believe she meant that something like centering prayer - often viewed by the self-appointed "practices" police who belong to certain branches of supposed Christendom as dangerous and selfish - is actually preparing us to listen to a world larger than ourself. It teaches us that we are not the center of anything. Any life that uses God as an excuse to personalize everything will tunnel down and down and down. It will hold up  self-improvement, self-preservation, or endless self-discovery as saviors and ultimately that life will collapse in on itself.

A little silence, a little solitude, a lot of stillness will sometimes allow us to hear "the heart of the world" alongside of our own heartbeat. We lose more ourselves if we are the center of our own worlds. This, for me, has come in tiny shifts in the way I see the world - hauling water to the back garden becomes a meditation on all the women in the world who carry water over distances of all kinds for survival. My chronic pain condition, on my less foggy days, teaches me about the nature of suffering and compassion. If I stay focussed on my own pain it obliterates everyone else. If I forget about my own pain, I may do harm to myself and not manage it correctly. Tension. Balance. Decrease. Increase.

And even this weekend's dental surgery has me thinking of all those who don't have a way of getting dental work done. The pounding in my jaws is a sign of healing and approaching health rather than a frightening future.

It is very tempting to use contemplative practices as some kind of self-improvement path. Practices may improve our life - hopefully our vision and our hearing. In my experience, they may make us miserable first as we learn to get out of the way and then a bigger door opens into the heart of the world.

Perilous dark path.

It has come to my attention lately that I don't really trust God. Sometimes I don't even trust that there is a God. Having grown up with the kind of "Bless me. Bless me." prayers that never really worked for anyone and certainly only seemed to work in very specific countries, even in specific kinds of neighborhoods, this makes prayer of the asking kind quite difficult.  I like this:

From Everything Belongs by Richard Rohr:

"I think Jesus' primary metaphor for the mystery of transformation is the sign of Jonah (Matt. 16:4, 12:39, Luke 11:29). This sign has taken on a great significance for me. In Luke's Gospel passage in which Jesus tells us, 'It is an evil and adulterous generation that wants a sign' (Luke 11:49), he then says the only sign he will give us is the sign of Jonah. As a good Jew, Jesus knew the graphic story of Jonah the prophet, who was running from God and was used by God almost in spite of himself. Jonah was swallowed by the whale and taken where he would rather not go. This was Jesus' metaphor for death and rebirth. Think of all the other signs, apparitions, and miracles that religion looks for and seeks and even tries to create. But Jesus says it is an evil and adulterous generation that looks for these things. That's a pretty hard saying. He says instead we must go inside the belly of the whale for a while. Then and only then will we be spit upon a new shore and understand our call. That's the only pattern Jesus promises us. . . .

"We seldom go freely into the belly of the beast. Unless we face a major disaster like the death of a friend or spouse or loss of a marriage or job, we usually will not go there. As a culture, we have to be taught the language of descent. That is the great language of religion. It teaches us to enter willingly, trustingly into the dark periods of life. These dark perods are good teachers. Religious energy is in the dark questions, seldom in the answers. Answers are the way out, but that is not what we are here for. But when we look at the questions, we look for the opening to transformation. Fixing something doesn't usually transform us. We try to change events in order to avoid changing ourselves. We must learn to stay with the pain of life, without answers, without conclusions, and some days without meaning. That is the path, the perilous dark path of true prayer."

Attend.

Prayer to Be Attentive
Mary Jo Leddy

Be.
Still. My Soul.
Attend. Attend.
Do not snatch and grab
Do not grab and run
Do not flip
to the next channel
of the universe.

Attend. Attend.
To what flows
in the midst of flux
To what fires and
is not consumed
To what stays
and satisfies.

Be attentive
to the graciousness
the glory and the goodness
that is here
that is now
ever new.
Amen.

Stop. Now.

I haven't written much here on what I have been thinking on during Lent. I want to enjoy the experience and write later. However this morning's commentary by Chittister on Chapter 43 of the Rule has been part of my Lenten practice of "ringing the bell", reminders throughout the day of the presence of God.

It is a lesson to be relearned in a modern age perhaps. There is nothing more important in our own list of important things to do in life than to stop at regular times, in regular ways to remember what life is really about, where it came from, why we have it, what we are to do with it and for whom we are to live it. No matter how tired we are or how busy we are or how impossible we think it is to do it, Benedictine spirituality says, Stop. Now. A spiritual life without a regular prayer life and an integrated community consciousness is pure illusion.

The chapter before is also good. The next layer of silence has been something I've been going toe to toe with over Lent.

Word

Word
by Madeleine L'Engle
The Weather of the Heart

I, who live by words, am wordless when
I try my words in prayer. All language turns
To silence. Prayer will take my words and then
Reveal their emptiness. The stilled voice learns
To hold its peace, to listen with the heart
To silence that is joy, is adoration.
The self is shattered, all words torn apart
In this strange patterned time of contemplation
That, in time, breaks time, breaks words, breaks me,
And then, in silence, leaves me healed and mended.
I leave, returned to language, for I see
Through words, even when all words are ended.
    I, who live by words, am wordless when
    I turn me to the Word to pray. Amen

Contemplative prayer

Storing away writing from other bloggers. Deegy at One Room:

I find I have to remind myself every now and then what contemplation, meditation, and prayer are really propelling me towards: love of God and love of my neighbor. Looking through some old e-mails I found these words a friend sent by Cynthia Bourgeualt, passed along to our little group of sojourners a little while ago, as we tried to practice centering prayer. She wrote that centering prayer was consent to the presence and action of God:

Practice is about being awake every moment of your life. Meditation is simply a tool for that. The reason it's hard at the beginning is that we are so easily distracted by our own selves. The goal is to interiorize being awake and attentive to life. The two parts of this are: attention to what is, and surrender to the divine. Theoretically, you will eventually do less meditation, not more. Your life becomes your practice. And when your attention becomes diffuse, and your self-concern distracts you, you go back to meditation. If your practice is a set of observances that you have to do every day ten times a day, it's not a practice, it's a compulsive disorder! The question is how you live. How you react when a needy person is in front of you.

And the now, blogging elsewhere, Thoughts on the Way to the Abbey:

"Contemplative prayer is...to stop, wait, and trust that God fills our emptiness. It can be painful, and it is certainly countercultural."

"In our utilitarian culture, where we suffer from a collective compulsion to do something practical, helpful, or useful, and where we feel compelled to make a contribution that can give us a sense of our own worth, contemplative prayer is a form of radical criticism. It is not useful or practical. It is simply to waste time for and with God."

"In this useless prayer, God comes to meet us. Our task is to be empty, free, and open, conscious of

God-with-us...."

-Henri Nouwen, Clowning in Rome

May God Bless You...

I blogged last year about grumpiness around Christmas time. The funniest thing is when christians get grumpy about people not having joy or knowing the true meaning of Christmas. "Damn you!", as lapels are grabbed and shaking occurs, "Have some joy!"

I have seen the prayer below quoted as a Franciscan travel blessing. I'm not sure of its origin but I noticed a comment after it that said something like "If christians were like this, maybe I'd go back to being involved with them." Hope. Joy. Foolishness. Anger at injustice instead of people not understanding us. Why not? Oh and pass me one of those cookies shaped like a Christmas tree...fa la la la la...

May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers,
half truths and superficial relationships
so that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger at injustice,
oppression, and exploitation of people,
so that you may wish for justice, freedom, and peace.

May God bless you with enough foolishness
to believe that you can make a difference in this world,
so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.