Do
not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.
[John 14:1]
Don’t
let your hearts be troubled… Isn’t
it a bit like someone saying to you: Now
don’t worry about… whatever it is…?
Or the favourite saying of the late Joh Bjelke Petersen, Premier of
Queensland: Now, don’t you worry your
pretty little head about that! In
the Sermon on the Mount Jesus cautions: Don’t be anxious about tomorrow…[Matthew
6:25f]. Paul advises the Philippian church: Do
not worry about anything [4:6]. Jesus
says to Martha: You worry and fret over so many things. Plenty of people do seem to enjoy
worrying. It can seem a normal healthy
reaction to looming events. A person who
doesn’t worry can seem irresponsible, or to have a flimsy hold on reality.
Well, I am intrigued by the Greek verb John uses here. It normally means not so much sitting around frightened,
as simply being in a muddle. The noun
belonging to this verb does mean disorder or a mess, like some adolescent
bedrooms. The picture here in John is
not of someone who floats serenely through life, never feeling anxious – but
rather of the muddled, directionless heart, the heart afraid of pain or
adversity, always one way or another a victim, building protective fences, yet
still always feeling a draft.
The point of our stillness and silence in prayer is emphatically
not to build up our defences against the cruel world. One of our fine contemporary teachers,
Cynthia Bourgeault, writes about how useless it is to spend the precious time
of silence on what she calls our chaotic
wanting and needing. I would add, it
is also not the time for all our noisy internal puzzling over questions and
issues, memories and fantasies… All of
that is the muddle. Our minds can sort
that out some other time, maybe.
Meditation is not for that.
Rather, it is a gift of time for what Jesus called purity of heart
– Blessed are the pure in heart, for they
shall see God [Matt. 5:8]. Meditation
is when the mind steps aside in favour of the heart – as all contemplatives,
mystics, friends of silence, understand that word heart. The mind may have endless questions – the
heart has a single direction. It is not
confused. So it is that the practice of
Meditation in all great religious traditions has two great pillars.
The first is attention.
That is the point of the mantra.
It is a simple discipline. Each
time we realise we have become distracted, we gently return to the humility and
poverty of the mantra. We are asking for
nothing, simply being as fully present as we can right now. The second is consent. It is our mature, heart-felt consent, our
“Yes”, to life and death, to love and truth… accompanied ever by Jesus. And, promises St Paul in that quotation from
Philippians: The peace (“shalom” = health, order) of God, which surpasses all
understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
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