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.”
Prayer is Breath
If we were to survey folks in response to the question, “What is essential activity to support human life?” most likely responses would include eating, drinking, sleeping, making love (reproduction!), and perhaps some kind of work. Likely, many of us would forget to name a key essential activity necessary for staying alive—breathing! Since most of us breathe without thinking of it, we don’t regularly consider it explicitly. Breath’s work is implicit, often hidden, yet essential.
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
