Why it matters to be here – 2 February 2018

It seemed a good idea, as we start meeting again, to remind ourselves what we are doing – coming here at 8.30 on Friday mornings, having to organise ourselves accordingly, which may not have been simple, all for 30-40 minutes, much of it in silence, with 6 to 8 minutes of my dissertations, and a few minutes of discussion.  Of course, it’s more than that – the group is more than the sum of its individuals – there is always understanding and caring going on.

Primarily we practise Christian Meditation.  It is a form of prayer.  There are other forms of prayer.  Christian Meditation leads us towards what we call contemplative life and prayer, a special way of living in God’s world – and we can talk for ever (and we do) about what contemplative means!   Moreover, there are other forms of meditation.  Transcendental Meditation (TM) is one.  Buddhism and other faiths have sophisticated disciplines of meditation.  What we practise is Christian Meditation because we share varieties of Christian belief and allegiance – but even more because we understand that in the silence and stillness we are as present as we can manage to God in Christ, and God is present to us.

So, in our teachings about “attention”, and “consent”.  In our stillness and silence we are doing all we can simply to pay attention.  Pay attention to what…?  We are not asking for anything.  We are not seeing images or having visions.  We are not receiving messages or inspirations.  Normally each meditator has chosen a personal word or phrase, a mantra.   We “say it interiorly”, gently, repetitively.  The mantra is something to return to gently when we are inevitably distracted, as we always are, by thoughts or plans or memories or re-runs of events or conversations, or when we are assailed by feelings good or bad… whatever it is, we leave it there, gently return to the mantra, we are still again, and we are paying attention.  In all this, just for the time of prayer, we are setting self aside.  It is not our agenda that matters, right now.  We are consenting to the ego, the busy demanding self, being shifted from the place that belongs to God.

For lots of people we know, some of them church-goers all their lives and doers of good works, all this sort of carry-on sounds “mystical” and weird, perhaps slightly fanatical, at any rate surplus to requirements.  It also sounds like change, and change makes people nervous.  What is the matter with what we have always done – living a good life, being myself, going to church when I can, doing my best, achieving things…?  And it’s not usually a smart idea to be critical of that…

…except that our western world, taking leave of living faith in God, is becoming sadder and more lost.  Even some Christian teachers, such as my friend of years ago, Lloyd Geering, and others, evidently see no place for prayer, or for the concept of a loving relationship with a loving God.  Yet in the world that is emerging, as more of us can see, it is contemplative faith that will survive, sustain and nourish, giving us light and wisdom.  We are practising here the faith and practice we must now be teaching – as Jesus put it, leaving self behind in order to follow him.