When I was growing up, the whole family sang songs together, sometimes just the seven in our house and sometimes with the cousins nearby so that there were thirteen altogether singing around the piano. That is where I first heard the word “abide” and it was in the song Abide with me. “I need thy presence every passing hour…through cloud and sunshine, Lord, abide with me. Or “In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.”
Actually we read in the Bible in John 15 that Jesus is saying to us:
"Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. 5I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. . . . .. 7If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit"
Jesus tells us that God is within us, looking to be our companion, always available. How shall we be available to God? When Jesus says go into that room, I think he also means that inner room of our heart, our inmost center where we are not identified with a role or an emotion and are beyond activities. Rather it is so deep within that all that is going on is abiding – that is, companionship with God.
As we say a simple prayer word or phrase over and over, we re letting the Spirit of God pray in us. In a way we have to listen within to the word we are saying. So that when thoughts arise, or images, we move back within and say our prayer word again. That repeated word is a symbol of our consent to the abiding Presence of God and to whatever God wants to do in our depths to heal us and draw us into more intimate relationship with Him. To abiding.
We don’t have to fight off obsessive thoughts and feelings, we just have to let them go for a while as we come back to our prayer word.. We trust that by abiding in us. God’s loving is going on in us.
There are many good ways to pray. And they are for other times of day – like the walking prayer, like devotional praying, or petitions for others. This quiet prayer is a transforming practice. Thomas Keating says it good to show up for your time with your Divine therapist twice a day!
Let us pray. In silence call to mind that God is with us and within us. Sit up straight. Close your eyes and introduce your prayer word. Keep saying it within and with attentiveness until your 20 minutes timer dings! Close within by saying the Our Father.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Monday, October 13, 2008
CONSCIOUS CONTACT WITH GOD
“Half measures avail us nothing. We stood at the turning point. We asked for His protection and care with complete abandon”
Years ago a dear friend of mine, sister Mary who attended OA meetings said to me that it was great awakening for her when she pondered those words ‘the care of God’. She said to me just think of that. God cares for us, takes care of us, nothing is more important than believing that.
We walk by faith, not sight. Whatever it is that we believe about God, it is an act of Faith. That is why every day, every time I start to meditate I say, O God, I believe you are here and I adore you profoundly. Teach me to do your will for you are my God.
For, in the words of St. Paul: In God we live and move and have our being.
We are more immersed in God more than a fish is immersed in water. And when we say that, I believe we are immersed in love. Foundational to our lives is the belief that God is the creator of heaven and earth. Is this just a past event? Do we think of God as out there some where? Really God is sustaining us in life even as we sit here.
TRY this: Try saying in your own mind and heart and with eyes closed, what I am about to say, phrase by phrase, closing your eyes for a moment between each phrase. AS I sit here, the beating of my heart…the ebb and flow of my breathing…..the movement of my mind…the sensations of my body…are all signs of God’s ongoing creation and care of me…it is God who sustains me in life…I pause for a moment …and become aware of the presence of God within me…If I do not feel this way…I make a simple act of faith in the reality of the Presence of God….I believe that You, My God are here with me…I entrust my life and all my concerns to you, my God.
Many through the ages have called God the Ground of our being. Then Father John Main, in the book, The Way of Unknowing, writes that we need to adjust to the reality that God is the ground of our being. This means that we are invited to adjust to this reality. God is with us. And God is for u. As it says somewhere in the Bible, if God is for us who can be against us…
Remember that beautiful Psalm 23? The Lord is my Shepherd., there is nothing I shall want.. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil for Thou art with me, Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me. My Mother told me in later years that when we were little my brother Joe and I used come home from school along a dirt road in the city of Yonkers New York and we would be saying in a singsong way: Thou are with me, Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.
This valley of the shadow of death comes from not only our own sorrows that we have had, but the sorrows of the world. While some suffering such the death of a child or young person comes from an illness, most sorrows are caused by unloving, power struggles, hatred, unfogiveness, retaliation, cruelty, endless put-downs, resentments and petty criticisms. In lesser ways all of us know we are not 100% forgiving or encouraging to everyone we meet and know. Yet here we are believing that God has care for us, for every least person on earth. God loves us for nothing! God has first loved us that is how we can afford to turn our lives and wills over to His care.
“Meditation comes to put an end to all the dullness, the fear, the pettiness, all the lack of love in our lives as we return to it each morning and each evening, with an absolute seriousness and deepening joy” John Main
Our real life is a journey into love; our life is going to go on forever, We do not have a limited supply of life. I may be old and gray and falling apart, and not have more the 15 more years on earth, but then my life is not at all ended, Life is changed not taken away.. What we are invited to do in this human journey is to improve our conscious contact with God who gives us life forever.
How then do prayer and meditation improve our conscious contact? The first thing to remember is that we walk by faith. This faith is prompted by the witness of others and sustained by the sense of belonging, which is totally real.
And we long to be totally real.
So let us talk about prayer and meditation and looking only for the knowledge of God’s will.
How shall we let prayer become integral to our every day life? Well, one way is to take up the practice of a walking prayer. Another is pondering our sacred scriptures. And of course, Meditation. Ways of praying may differ but the call to pray is an invitation to live more intimately with God. and to do the Will of God.
We are not at all taking about techniques. We are talking about the inward journey that makes us real. There is so much more to us that the outward..
Since God is our constant companion then trying to be attentive to God’s presence is certainly not a technique, but a way of love. A way of love and a work of love.
Years ago a dear friend of mine, sister Mary who attended OA meetings said to me that it was great awakening for her when she pondered those words ‘the care of God’. She said to me just think of that. God cares for us, takes care of us, nothing is more important than believing that.
We walk by faith, not sight. Whatever it is that we believe about God, it is an act of Faith. That is why every day, every time I start to meditate I say, O God, I believe you are here and I adore you profoundly. Teach me to do your will for you are my God.
For, in the words of St. Paul: In God we live and move and have our being.
We are more immersed in God more than a fish is immersed in water. And when we say that, I believe we are immersed in love. Foundational to our lives is the belief that God is the creator of heaven and earth. Is this just a past event? Do we think of God as out there some where? Really God is sustaining us in life even as we sit here.
TRY this: Try saying in your own mind and heart and with eyes closed, what I am about to say, phrase by phrase, closing your eyes for a moment between each phrase. AS I sit here, the beating of my heart…the ebb and flow of my breathing…..the movement of my mind…the sensations of my body…are all signs of God’s ongoing creation and care of me…it is God who sustains me in life…I pause for a moment …and become aware of the presence of God within me…If I do not feel this way…I make a simple act of faith in the reality of the Presence of God….I believe that You, My God are here with me…I entrust my life and all my concerns to you, my God.
Many through the ages have called God the Ground of our being. Then Father John Main, in the book, The Way of Unknowing, writes that we need to adjust to the reality that God is the ground of our being. This means that we are invited to adjust to this reality. God is with us. And God is for u. As it says somewhere in the Bible, if God is for us who can be against us…
Remember that beautiful Psalm 23? The Lord is my Shepherd., there is nothing I shall want.. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil for Thou art with me, Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me. My Mother told me in later years that when we were little my brother Joe and I used come home from school along a dirt road in the city of Yonkers New York and we would be saying in a singsong way: Thou are with me, Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.
This valley of the shadow of death comes from not only our own sorrows that we have had, but the sorrows of the world. While some suffering such the death of a child or young person comes from an illness, most sorrows are caused by unloving, power struggles, hatred, unfogiveness, retaliation, cruelty, endless put-downs, resentments and petty criticisms. In lesser ways all of us know we are not 100% forgiving or encouraging to everyone we meet and know. Yet here we are believing that God has care for us, for every least person on earth. God loves us for nothing! God has first loved us that is how we can afford to turn our lives and wills over to His care.
“Meditation comes to put an end to all the dullness, the fear, the pettiness, all the lack of love in our lives as we return to it each morning and each evening, with an absolute seriousness and deepening joy” John Main
Our real life is a journey into love; our life is going to go on forever, We do not have a limited supply of life. I may be old and gray and falling apart, and not have more the 15 more years on earth, but then my life is not at all ended, Life is changed not taken away.. What we are invited to do in this human journey is to improve our conscious contact with God who gives us life forever.
How then do prayer and meditation improve our conscious contact? The first thing to remember is that we walk by faith. This faith is prompted by the witness of others and sustained by the sense of belonging, which is totally real.
And we long to be totally real.
So let us talk about prayer and meditation and looking only for the knowledge of God’s will.
How shall we let prayer become integral to our every day life? Well, one way is to take up the practice of a walking prayer. Another is pondering our sacred scriptures. And of course, Meditation. Ways of praying may differ but the call to pray is an invitation to live more intimately with God. and to do the Will of God.
We are not at all taking about techniques. We are talking about the inward journey that makes us real. There is so much more to us that the outward..
Since God is our constant companion then trying to be attentive to God’s presence is certainly not a technique, but a way of love. A way of love and a work of love.
Sunday, October 05, 2008
“Awake my soul…”
In two different psalms we cry out “Awake my soul…awake O harp and lyre. I will awaken the dawn”. Ps. 57 and Ps 108
It is a matter of waking up to the reality of who we are. and what really matters. Jesus says to us as to those early followers: I no longer call you servants, I call you friends. He has taught us to call Gopd our Father, so we are also the children of God. He has told us that he loves us..Love one another as I have loved you. So each ne of us is also the Beloved of God.
So we need to wake ourselves up. I wale myself up physically with an alarm clock, the kind for the deaf that vibrates under my pillow. The way to wake up spiritually is to start right away to make a habit of greeting the Lord as you get out of bed, and in the shower, and getting dressed. Could there be anything more important? Perhaps greeting your spouse first? But nothing else.
Then after making sure you start the day with greeting the Lord, follow the practice of Thomas Merton. Here is what he says: strictly speaking, I have a very simple way of prayer. It is centered entirely on attention to the presence of God and to His will and his love. That is to say, that it is centered on faith by which alone we can know of the presence of God.”
There can be no dearer friend than Jesus. This is the feast of St. Bernard who says much about the love of Jesus. IN repsonse to stay awake to this reality, we try to thread prayer through our day by what I call the walking prayer or what Father Keating calls the breath prayer. Some short word or phrase of love or petition. St. therese: Jesus my life, Jesus my love, Jesus my all.
And John of the Cross tells us – that yes God has so loved us, and the reason he has loved us is that he can make us happy and so that we can arrive at the fullness of Love. So why not wake up ever more?
It is a matter of waking up to the reality of who we are. and what really matters. Jesus says to us as to those early followers: I no longer call you servants, I call you friends. He has taught us to call Gopd our Father, so we are also the children of God. He has told us that he loves us..Love one another as I have loved you. So each ne of us is also the Beloved of God.
So we need to wake ourselves up. I wale myself up physically with an alarm clock, the kind for the deaf that vibrates under my pillow. The way to wake up spiritually is to start right away to make a habit of greeting the Lord as you get out of bed, and in the shower, and getting dressed. Could there be anything more important? Perhaps greeting your spouse first? But nothing else.
Then after making sure you start the day with greeting the Lord, follow the practice of Thomas Merton. Here is what he says: strictly speaking, I have a very simple way of prayer. It is centered entirely on attention to the presence of God and to His will and his love. That is to say, that it is centered on faith by which alone we can know of the presence of God.”
There can be no dearer friend than Jesus. This is the feast of St. Bernard who says much about the love of Jesus. IN repsonse to stay awake to this reality, we try to thread prayer through our day by what I call the walking prayer or what Father Keating calls the breath prayer. Some short word or phrase of love or petition. St. therese: Jesus my life, Jesus my love, Jesus my all.
And John of the Cross tells us – that yes God has so loved us, and the reason he has loved us is that he can make us happy and so that we can arrive at the fullness of Love. So why not wake up ever more?
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