St Paul has these tantalising sayings about life and death -- sayings we probably know about from hearing them in church, but have never quite come to terms with: ...as dying, and see, we are alive! It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And I can certainly remember as a youth being puzzled about some of these things -- Paul actually says in one letter that he would prefer to die, but for the present he seems expected to continue living.
The journey a contemplative person is on is very much a matter of confronting the personal issues which may make us afraid of death, afraid of any signals of losing personal control of things or events. In meditation, to relinquish our illusion of ordering of our universe, even just for 20 or 25 minutes, is immediately to confront some of our fears. Mercifully, the hidden secret which we eventually discover is that what we can scarcely do ourselves starts to get done in us anyway, as we find the grace to be still and consent. This is why stillness matters -- our only tasks right now are to be still, physically and mentally, and say our word.
It makes the time of silence both easy (because all we have to do is say our mantra), and hard (because the door now opens a chink to the distant protest of our inner demons). And the best teaching I know remains the same -- just say your word. Be still, be silent, consent to the presence of God.
We have 25 minutes without our defences actually up there in front of us. In a group this is good because we are all doing much the same. Each time of meditation is an announcement to ourselves that one day, and we really don’t know when, this is going to happen anyway.
You may remember Jesus’s story about the man who had too many possessions, and so he went away sorrowful. We are not going away sorrowful because we are refusing in this time to be defined by our image, or our lifestyle, or our possessions, our achievements, our reputation. These things are not bad. But we are preferring to be named and defined by God and by the truth. The truth requires humility and consent, and the best we can do about that is to be still and silent.
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