26 August 2011

Fidelity - 26 August 2011

The teachers of contemplative prayer and life often come back to the word Fidelity. Fidelity, faithfulness, is a concept to know about and to appreciate. It manifests in Christian Meditation most simply of all as fidelity to the mantra. Whatever our mantra is, we are faithful to it. The mantra signifies a great deal for us, after all -- it signifies attention, paying attention, to stillness and to silence in prayer. It signifies to us where we may have wandered from in our lives generally. It signifies our poverty in prayer and life, the poverty of empty hands and a receptive heart, because the mantra, when we come to pray, is all we have to say.

Now, this is rather different from much that we normally experience. Much of life is necessarily coping with change. Faithfulness has to be therefore negotiable, fidelity to the old way may become inappropriate or silly. One of the earliest Greek philosophers said everything changes, παντα ρει, all is in flux. We have to change, and the ability to manage change is important. We change our minds. We change our abode, our lifestyle, our dietary patterns, sometimes our friends. We are constantly invited to change our body lotions, dog food and deodorants. Consumer wisely advises people to shop around, there may be a better deal. Some people move from church to church in the hope of a better experience. The first chapter of the Rule of St Benedict is a very funny dissertation on restless monks who shop around different monasteries in the hope that they might find something more congenial.

And of course we are not opposed to something new or better. Fidelity however is referring to a central part of each of us where we have actually made a decision or two. We may not have done this consciously and deliberately -- it may be more that God has brought us to this point of faith and faithfulness. Amid all the change around us there is a place in us that is still. It is not that we now know exactly what we believe -- it may be a place of mystery in many senses. It is certainly a place where love is possible, because God is there.

But in any case we don’t describe it by words. We know it by being there, by becoming still and silent, by our choice of fidelity to the simplest things, the mantra, the stillness, and the silence.

I have set my soul in silence and peace. A weaned child on its mother’s breast, even so is my soul. [Psalm 131]

19 August 2011

I don’t have the time - 19 August 2011

Christian Meditation, and indeed meditation within any of the great faiths or none, brings us to think differently about time. So much of our life is about the spending, prioritising of time. Often, at various stages in our lives, there seems scarcely enough time to allocate. But when it comes to meditation our teachers tell us not to worry about the passage of time. And at first that is one of the harder tasks. The usual difficulty with starting to learn meditation is that “I simply don’t have the time”.

We had a neighbour where we used to live who was simply unable to be still while she was awake. In her childhood her father would not allow her to sit down with a book. He would demand, “Haven’t you got something to do?” Now in later life she is totally justified by works and is known as a good and kind, busy and outgoing woman.

It can be quite funny at a serious silent retreat -- retreatants are invited to come without their laptops or cellphones or detective novels or edifying books. But they usually shamefacedly smuggle these items in.

Father Laurence Freeman tells about spending one Easter on Bere Island, a very small island off the Irish coast. He and some others decided to awake early on Easter morning and watch the sun rise from a place where there were some very old sacred stones. When they staggered out of bed and up the hill it was just becoming daylight. Fr Laurence says he had forgotten the long wait between the light of dawn and actual sunrise -- it can be up to an hour before the sun appears on the eastern horizon. They were cold and bleary, and they wanted their breakfast or at least some hot coffee. He says it was a long wait -- he found himself wondering whether the sun would rise -- he decided it probably would.

But this, he thought, is exactly the life of faith. Faith is waiting in hope -- the writer to the Hebrews calls it the hope of things not seen. Immediate gratification may have to be set aside. He notes how the chatter of he and his friends settled down to a silent waiting, as though silence were more appropriate. And then, of course, the Easter sun began to blaze and rise in the sky. In meditation we are waiting in faith. And that is all. The mantra is our reminder not to follow down the byways of distractions.

The discipline begins to reshape our usual sense and experience of time. The things that bother us start to change, or reduce in number, or both. We are becoming still enough, perhaps even poor enough, to receive the fruits of the Spirit. The ego, and whatever facade we may hope is what others see of us, begin to reduce. In quietness and confidence is our strength, writes the prophet.

12 August 2011

No graven images - 12 August 2011

Sometimes I think that contemplative prayer must be a confession of our helplessness as much as anything. Most of our thoughts, most of our days, are about memories, hopes, desires, fears and worries, things that have happened... or plans. I can be very happy sitting in the winter sun and reviewing what I should have said to Mrs Thundermuffin 30 years ago. We don’t see people, places, situations as they really are, but rather as coloured by our reactions to them, our opinions, prejudices, experience and emotions. So really, to that extent, we walk around in a landscape of our own mind, our own thoughts, sometimes even a world of illusion of our own construction. We get caught up in our own narrative; it seems to be the only reality that exists.

Moreover, contemplative people are bothered by the fact that, the minute we start to imagine God, through the filters of our own opinions, hopes and fears and whatnot, to say nothing of the residue of what we think the church and our parents taught us about God long ago, we have started constructing an idol. Jewish wisdom understood this, and hence the absolute prohibition of “graven images”, idols. God is in fact encountered only as God’s self determines -- and for that we need to be still and silent, our agendas and all our best thoughts set aside. God seems to be best present to the humble of heart, say the Hebrew scriptures. There are various ways of saying this -- not in the earthquake, wind and fire, but in the still, small voice; Elijah needed to have exhausted all his own wisdom and strength before he could hear it, on Mount Carmel.

I suppose there are, somewhere, some wonderful contemplatives who are much closer to these mysteries than I have ever known. Mostly, we see it from afar; something may happen which suggests that we have moved a bit further along the road of pilgrimage, and that’s very good. What we do is what we can. We sit still, and we decide not to rush off anywhere right now. We shut down the agendas of our lives. It doesn’t matter that this is only for 20 - 30 minutes. It is not tokenism, it is an important gesture and an important discipline. Sometimes I like to think it serves notice on all the rest of my life and consciousness that it had better be very worried. For that brief time we are as real as we know how. We are not saying anything -- but if we were, it would be that we are content to be here because we don’t have to do anything or appear in any way which is not truthful. The person who is present here and now, then, is the person God made and loves.

Christian Meditation Group, Basic Information

Christian Meditation Group
General Information


Our group meets in the hall at Christ Church, Warkworth, on Fridays at 8.30 am. Normally we will be away by 9.15 am, or soon after.

The meetings are very simple. We meet essentially for a time of Christian Meditation as a group. At least some of us will be practising Christian Meditation daily in our own circumstances. The group meetings are important for encouragement, and for learning the practice.

It matters that we are punctual. It is part of the discipline. Each meeting begins at 8.30 am. If you are unavoidably late, please enter quietly and without fuss or comment.

The leader (at present Ross Miller) will give a very brief talk, and then there will be between 20 minutes and 30 minutes of meditation, silence and stillness. At the end of the time we give some space to any questions or comments. Then there is a brief verbal prayer and we leave.

Please wear whatever is necessary to ensure you are not too cold or uncomfortable. It is fine to bring a rug if that helps.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
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The space for questions, comments, discussion, is limited. However you can always feel free to email Ross -- rossmill@orcon.net.nz -- or go to the special blog/website -- http://nzccmwarkworth.blogspot.com/ The intention is to post each Friday morning talk on the website so that you can read it at your leisure if you wish.

The website already includes background material about Christian Meditation. Related websites are: The World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM) http://www.wccm.org/ -- and the NZCCM http://www.christianmeditationnz.org.nz/index.php

05 August 2011

Walking wounded - 5 August 2011

Suppose it makes not one whit of difference to God that we are actually quite weak and fallible persons; that while we may not know ourselves very well and puzzle ourselves at times, what we do know well is that we are rarely as good on the inside as we hope we appear on the outside. Suppose God is actually not as upset about our apparent sins as we are. Suppose, as we are getting on in life, as it were, we are increasingly concerned that we have not improved to quite the same extent as we had hoped, and we are unsure how much time there may be left to make a few necessary renovations and display a better version of ourselves to the world.

Contemplatives know that all that may be true, and perhaps rather more than that. We are more interested however in God, as we encounter God in stillness and silence, who is not condemning us, God who is flatly declining to take one side of things against another, God depicted in Jesus (St Paul says Jesus is the icon of the invisible God) who was one with our mortal and fallible flesh, the God whose presence is always love.

Contemplatives understand the church perfectly well to be the community of the walking wounded. We are, each of us, bruised and scarred, often from early in childhood, as we know. We also know that the last thing we now choose in our mature understanding is to live as victims of our life, history and circumstances.

So we appear with our wounds in the silence and the stillness, not parading them of course, but bearing them, because they are the truth about us and about our history. Not dwelling on them, but simply acknowledging them.

What God sees is the heart that was always reaching, perhaps feebly, for faith, always actually loving, the real motivations even of the mistakes and deliberately wrong choices. It seems to me that the church has never taken seriously the wisdom that God looks on the heart. In an age of utter superficiality and sentimentality, when people spend thousands on appearance and being free of wrinkles, it is probably incomprehensible anyway. St Paul has this lovely phrase: The eyes of your heart being open, that you may know... The eyes of your heart. In the silence and the stillness we seek by grace to open the eyes of the heart.