Quietness and trust will be our strength

For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel:
In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength. Isaiah 30

This quote is in a chapter where God is berating the people for trusting in any group or people or in possessions of any kind to save them. Good quote for Lent.

First, returning. A time when traditionally we “give up” something for lent, when we let go of some attitude or practice that we have come to realize is not good

Then Rest. I wondered how this fits into Lent, but then I thought how many of us are either overextended in all kinds of busyness. Or our minds are like monkeys always chattering, so rest could mean we seek to give our brains a rest and just take up the practice of a walking prayer,

In Quietness. There are two aspects of this that could help us and one is that we provide ourselves with more quiet time, when we set aside time for prayer or spiritual reading, or just star gazing! The other is that we actually pray!

But the best is trust. to affirm to God that we do indeed trust in the love that God has for us. That we know that God wants only what is for our good. That we let go of anxiety and substitute a prayer of trust whenever we feel ourselves anxious.

We do all of this when we take the time for Christian meditation or centering prayer. Twice a day is best. We set aside the time. We sit and call to mind the reality of the Presence of God who is always present, always sustaining us in life by his love, never far off no matter how we feel. We choose a simple prayer word like Maranatha, or the Holy Name, and just keep saying it and come back to this prayer whenever we realize our mind has wandered off on anything else at all.

We are just entrusting our lives to God as Jesus did when He prayed: Into your hands I commend my spirit.

Quietness and trust will be our strength.

Rooted in God who is Love

Thomas Merton sometimes wrote about how we are caught in a kind of collective hypnosis. Because mostly we look at life through the eyes of others. It is how we learn as children. But at some point in life we are invited to look at life through the eyes of God. Looking through the eyes of other humans what we see is given value by them. Looking through the eyes of God gives us a different view. One way to do this is to pray with the New Testament. Another way is by Christian Meditation.
When we take up the practice of meditation or centering prayer, we are letting God lead us in ways we know not, but we go in trust.

What gifts are entrusted to God for the space of 20 or 30 minutes?
our ability to think
our capacity to love each other
our creative talent
Our imagination

What difficulties are we entrusting to God during this time?
all our worries and concerns
our fears about ourselves and our families and our world
All our physical miseries

What do we let go of?
the illusion that my own mind, so gifted, can figure
everything out
the illusion that my own good will by itself can cure
anything
the illusion that I am the master of my fate
the illusion that humans can bring about peace and justice on their own
the illusion that humans will always have the right views for me

Taking the attention off ourselves for 30 minutes in this way of praying "may not be exciting, but it is rewarding. It may not be dramatic but it does take courage. It may not challenge our mind but it challenges our fascination with ourselves." (source unknown)
Why meditate? So to entrust our lives to God that we let God have a free hand in our inmost being where God, in His wondrous love, works to transform us into love.

"Attentive to what is – the supreme reality of God’s Presence."

One message of the Benedictine John Main is that to be aware and attentive to the Presence of God, we must learn to stop thinking about ourselves. That is why he so strongly recommends Christian Meditation. As we sit in silence and repeat a prayer word, we give our attention to the prayer word as a way of taking attention off ourselves. All the while, as we have made that act of faith in the reality of the Presence of God, we are just letting God work in our hearts to wake us up to the love which God has for us.
This is a journey for everyone!. It is simple. It is an act of trust in the love that God has for us. And it is good to remember that St. Paul has told us that the Holy Spirit prays in us. Often with ‘groaning". I remember one time after my mother was in her 90’s I heard her groaning and I rushed to her room. She just said: Oh I am all right, I was just having a groaning prayer.
So whenever we pray and ini whatever way, the Holy Spirit is praying in us and for us. We do not need to fear. What we need is persistence. Say your chosen prayer word or phrase, over and over and come back to it whenever you find yourself thinking about anything! This is the journey of our whole life. To go from self-concern to God-concern, to profound trust which flows from faith in the love God has for us.
I want to share a well-known prayer of St.Ignatius. He wrote it first in Latin and often said it in Latin so you will see a difference from the one translated from the Spanish. I might add also that early Church Fathers thought grace was relly the uncreated Energy of God What a gift!
Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and all my will, - all that I have and possess. You, Lord, have given them all to me. I now give it back to you, O Lord. All of it is yours. Dispose of it according to your will. Give me love of yourself along with your grace for that is sufficient for me.