Peace
I leave with you, said
Jesus. Perhaps it’s time to go over yet
again basic things we have said often in the past – fundamentals about
Christian Meditation and how we understand contemplative prayer and life. Most people come to meditation from busy and
involved lives. Some levels of tiredness
and anxiety typically accompany us into the meditation room. A lot of meditators initially come because of
the opportunity for a blessed respite, silence and stillness, maybe half an
hour without the clamour of tasks and responsibilities, the extraordinary gift
of 20-30 minutes of silence. I know
people who are unable to sit down and read a book without feeling guilty. Actual permission, then, to be still is
valued and even treasured.
But it’s more than that. “Peace” in Jewish language and culture is
shalom. It is more than the absence of
noise or bustle. It is more than the
absence of conflict. Shalom is a
positive, active thing. It denotes a
state of rightness, being on the right path.
Inevitably there is ageing and suffering, pain and death, but we remain
in touch with hope and truth, love and goodness. The real enemies of shalom are, for instance,
constant eroding anxiety – in this same word Jesus says, let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. Fear and shalom can scarcely go
together. Preoccupation with agendas, and
with control, and with what others are doing, obsession with particular things,
addictions – all these thrive in the absence of shalom.
It is important to note that Jesus sees shalom
as a gift. It is what he leaves with his
disciples. They do not generate it
within themselves, by self-improvement programmes or by cutting out
carbohydrates. We come to shalom as we
learn to be still and silent, consent to set aside what is unhelpful. Shalom is the life of what Jesus called the
kingdom, and he said the kingdom is always near, imminent, even within
you.
I sometimes feel that the hardest thing, the
sharpest enemy of shalom, is the prevailing fact of injustice in the world,
seemingly everywhere, and often very close.
An unfair world -- which of course, were we able, we would order quite
differently… But Jesus also experienced
this unjust world. He taught a shalom
which is at the level of our hearts and all that inwardly motivates us. Where
your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Jesus’s gift of shalom is not contingent
on everything else first coming right. Before
it is a matter of doing things and changing the world, it is a matter of being,
of receiving, of deep and steady inner change.
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