When I first learned Centering Prayer—a prayer of quiet and stillness during which the pray-er consents to the Presence and activity of the Holy One—I recall the instructions about how to deal with distracting thoughts. “Imagine them as clouds floating away as you let them go.” The instruction was accompanied by a hand gesture: up, off, and away, indicating some far-off place. I never found the instruction very helpful.
Waiting and Expectation
Recently, I spoke with a friend about his process of waiting to be ordained in his tradition. While he expects that it will happen, he does not know when. I reflected how hard it must be to want something, to know it is coming sometime, and yet, not know exactly when it will be actualized. These are some of the dynamics of expectation, of knowing that the vista of “yes” is over the horizon, but not knowing when the sun will rise.
Topics:
Contemplative Practice
Will of God and Love of God
What is my purpose in life? How am I to know what to do in order to make the world a better place? What do I really, most deeply desire?
Topics:
Contemplative Practice
God as Up, But Not Down
When asked “where is God,” most children will point up and out. As it turns out, many adults carry the same assumption. Of course, there is the occasional, sweet child who will point inward toward the heart in response to the prompt, but most of us carry at least residual traces of the sense of God as “out there.”
Topics:
Contemplative Practice
In and Out
If you ever played the Hokey Pokey as a child, you’re familiar with the thrill of placing a body part “in” and then “out” and then “shaking it all about!” Whereas the ups and downs are found on the vertical spatial plane and the back and forth are found on the horizontal spatial plane, to be “in or out” is a three-dimensional take on spatial reality.
Topics:
Contemplative Practice
Back and Forth
“Back and forth” is another pair of opposites that helps us to understand contemplative dialogue spatially. Similar to the ups and downs, the back and forth are a set of spatial opposites that symbolically represent many layers of meaning. But whereas the ups and downs are vertical in orientation, the back and forth are horizontal. And where the ups and downs often come naturally, like gentle undulations, the back and forth tend to come more reactively and feel harsher.
Topics:
Contemplative Practice