The verses composed for this reflection are so rich.  I’m planning to sit with them this week. Whatever our fears or failures,  inner or outer, Christ welcomes us to bring them in and to sit with them by that beautiful inner Fire.

Marlene OSB

Linda, your comments make me think of the Tao Te Ching, the ancient Chinese spiritual classic.  Check out Chapter 8…I recommend the translation by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English.  You can Google it.

Marlene OSB

Sorry to be posting this so late in the week, but the Keating video really spoke to me. I tend to think of contemplative practices in terms of Centering Prayer, lectio Divina, mindfulness, Welcoming Prayer, etc…with service as a kind of outgrowth. But in fact it’s the most challenging form of contemplative practice since we are asked to use our gifts, in obedience to the call of God in the here-and-now moment, without any kind of identification or subtle condescension. This has really stayed with me this week as I tend to the often unpredictable demands of monastic service. Demands?  Maybe “invitations ” is a better word!

Marlene OSB

 

I love the image of Jesus asleep on a cushion while that storm rages on. He’s completely in charge.  It brings me to the realization that when the little boat of my own life seems to be swamped, at my Center is that same Jesus, quietly in charge.

The song “Take O Take Me as I Am” really grabbed me, maybe more so because I wasn’t expecting it. It evokes a response that goes right to my heart. I’m still sitting and praying with it and I expect that I will be for a while. Whether or not I eventually find words for all of this, doesn’t really matter. I know it is “doing something” within me.

Anne Stadler’s questions say it all for me. Looking at my whole life narrative helps me to keep a perspective on things that might be disturbances in the immediate here and now. It creates that tiny but all-important space between who I am and what I am thinking or feeling.

Etty Hillesum’s words take me right back to Thomas’s often-repeated saying: “Change the direction you’re looking in for happiness” It always comes back to God., without exception.

Practicing non-judgmental self-awareness this week is showing me that I still have my “property lines” in place when it comes to my time and my daily agenda. In fact, that possessive pronoun “my” really needs to drop or at least loosen up. In the Risen Christ and in Christ’s universe, there ARE no property lines. It’s a lesson I keep learning over and over again.

“…there is no need for agreement, just acceptance of what is.”  I’ve been learning this,  over and over, since I was a novice….and that’s many decades now!   This acceptance is really and simply surrender.

1)We have a God who loves us unconditionally,  and if that God has either willed, or permitted, a situation,  then my surrender is to say “yes”,  not necessarily in agreement,  but in acceptance.

2) “Change the direction you’re looking in for happiness”  (Thomas Keating)…does my true happiness really depend on this situation being the way I want it to be,  even the way it perhaps should be?

3) The letting-go of the Welcoming Prayer is a development of the letting go I experience in Centering Prayer.

4) In surrendering,  I may discover that I really didn’t see all the angles and aspects of the situation or the inner struggles of the people involved.

My surrender reminds me, over and over again, that there is but one God….and it’s not me.

Susan, thanks for articulating this. So true… energy for the superficial decreases and energy for the depths of the present moment increases. I could be folding laundry, driving across town or leading a retreat. Doesn’t matter. All that is needed is the recognition that God is in me and around me.

Years ago I had a first glimpse of what this obedience meant but it was a kind of mindless passivity that invited me to simply flow with the breezes of life.  Sounds not so great but it worked. Then at a certain point, when I was facing major surgery and had just discovered Centering Prayer, that mindless passivity evolved into an invitation to mindful receptivity. This has been evolving for 20+ years, very slowly and happily. The sentence “Nos seeking anything, ready to receive” seems to sum it up.

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