How can it be that when we take time to sit for a while each day in silence, a new way of being seeps almost imperceptibly into every corner of life? It sounds so easy, to sit down twice a day in silence, beyond words, beyond thought, beyond image-making - ‘pure prayer’ our Christian forebears called it. But it isn’t easy; we don’t succumb to this sort of radical simplicity as readily as we might hope. We have to learn how to stick at it. Yet, if we do persevere, regular spending of time being inwardly present really does begin to spill over into our daily activity and from time to time makes itself especially clearly realised. Two such times of realisation have come for me in times of struggle and pain.
Some years ago my husband and I teamed up with another couple and sank everything we had into a project to form a small community at the service of others. It didn’t work out; we had to give up on it, sell up and part company. It wasn’t an easy house to sell and it all took time. I could so easily have fallen into the all-too-usual human patterns of regret, anxiety, anger, blame, impatience to escape into a new future, wondering why it had happened, where God had gone etc.
But I found myself graced by a quite different approach. I had come to understand that God is in every moment and that there are blessings in every day, if only we are clear-eyed and present to enough to notice them and open-hearted enough to receive them. And so it proved to be. There were indeed blessings in every day and that difficult period was transformed from being a time of arid, impatient waiting to a time of growth, learning, fruitfulness and deepening trust in God.
This January my husband died. I knew what it was like to grieve a beloved as my first husband had died many years previously. And I knew that the love between us ran even deeper than the first time. I wondered how it would be. I wasn’t foolish enough to think that years of silent meditation would make it easy. And it hasn’t made it easy in one sense, but it has transformed it.
The gift of grace this time was to realise that I had to be present to all of it, to tears, to joy, grief, friendship, loneliness, new growth, pain, healing, calm, discomfort, comfort, new insights, new creativity, confusion – all of it. I needed neither to fear the difficult emotions, trying to keep them at bay, nor to hold on to them. The difficult emotions have their due season; they come and they go. Everything is transient, except God, as St Teresa of Avila reminds us in the prayer found in her Bible.*
I learned to accept the joyful times, moments of deep peace, love and healing too, but without trying to prolong or keep hold of those times either; they come and they go. Everything has its season.
A text from St Paul had hovered around the edges of my mind for many years. I had always somehow understood it didn’t just apply to food for the stomach, and now it was coming home for me in a much more profound way: “For I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little and what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and being in need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.” (Phil 4: 11-13)
*Let nothing disturb you,
Let nothing frighten you,
All things are passing away.
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things.
Whoever has God lacks nothing;
God alone suffices.
*Liz is a member of The World Community for Christian Meditation and lives in London. She has served the meditation community in various capacities over the past 25 years, including a term as UK National Coordinator. She now focuses on teaching meditation, leading weekend and seven day retreats and offering spiritual direction. She is drawn increasingly to the Christian mystical tradition and to contemplative approaches to the Bible. She also has a developing interest in meditation in prisons, and in 12 step programmes for freedom from addiction and in contemplative approaches to spiritual direction. She contributed two chapters to the book ‘The Journey to the Heart’ on the Christian mystics and recorded the CD ‘Images of Meditation’ with its accompanying booklet.
After graduating with a degree in Latin, Liz pursued a career in the UK public library system to senior management level. Retiring early, she took the opportunity to study for an MA in Theology.
For more information about Christian meditation see the Christian meditation section of Living Water. See also www.wccmaustralia.org.au or www.wccm.org