Let me quote from Stillpoint,
the newsletter of the NZ Community for Christian Meditation: You sit
to meditate and begin saying the mantra... Then immediately you remember you
should have taken the car to the garage. And is my next appointment at three or
four? Should I do the washing today or tomorrow? Wasn’t that dinner guest’s
dress a beautiful colour last night? Hang on. I should be saying the mantra. Am
I saying it properly? Is this really getting me anywhere? I wonder if you know
when enlightenment happens. What is enlightenment? Where is God? Is God really
in this? Am I wasting time? Is there a better way of doing it? Where’s the
mantra gone now? Come on, back to it. How much longer is this going to last?
Did I set the alarm properly? I’ll take a quick look. A cup of coffee would be
nice, if I’ve got time. This will be better when I go to a proper retreat. It
will be lovely to be just quiet and away. Then I’ll be able to meditate well.
Should I go for the full week I have off or keep a few days free for a holiday
as well? Say your mantra. You’re wasting
precious time. Why does my side hurt after meals? My father died of cancer. I
am going to start a low fat diet tomorrow. There are special products now at
the supermarket for that. Did I get the new supermarket credit card? There are
so many things to remember. Jesus said one thing is necessary. I wonder what it
is. The alarm will go off any second now. Let’s say the mantra from now till
then. Oh I forgot to call so-and-so…
For most of us the whole idea of a mantra seems strange,
even alien. I think there are two things
to say about that. First, the repeating
of a word or phrase in Christian prayer is a tradition that can be traced back
to the very early centuries of Christian spirituality – and indeed is pivotal
in Orthodox Christianity to this day. Secondly,
if a spiritual practice in Buddhism, for instance, is found to be helpful, why
would we shun it because it’s “Buddhist”?
Thomas Merton, Bede Griffiths were teachers who made a point of learning
from Buddhism or Hinduism or Islam, in order to better practise the faith of
Christ. Indeed, John Main first learned
what came to be Christian Meditation from a Hindu swami in Malaysia. For most of us, I imagine, I hope, this kind
of issue ceased to be a problem years ago.
In fact we honour the distractions. They are not our enemy. They echo our normal busy, often noisy
lives. But during the time of prayer,
having recognised them, we let them go, see them float on past. We are choosing for this time not to live in
memory, or in what may happen later – we are choosing the present moment - and
in it, as best we can, we keep this little space clear. The mantra gently summons us back to that
place. For many, as time goes by, it
becomes a resonance and a reminder in all of life, not only at the times of
prayer.
Something I read quite recently -- I have forgotten what –
led me to pay some attention to the Hebrew word shekinah. It’s from a verb
which really means simply to settle, to sit down and be still – not too
different from the abide of John’s
Gospel. In Judaism shekinah had also a special meaning – it referred to the divine
presence in the innermost part of the Temple, the Holy of Holies. It’s a feminine noun, moreover. In a more homely way, Jews thought the shekinah settled under the canopy to
bless the couple at a Jewish wedding. And
if you have ever been to dinner in a Jewish home on Sabbath Eve, and watched
the mother of the family light the Sabbath candles… well there too, they say,
is the skekinah… what T S Eliot
called Light Invisible. It’s a lovely image, and it is a way to think
about the space we have in prayer and the repetition of the mantra.
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