Meditation/prayer is not always what people hope for {written in 2015) This morning as I was going to the main office after Vigils (our Morning Prayer service); I saw one of the retreatants in the sitting room. She asked me if she could take a page out of one of the newspapers to take home with her. I said no problem. Then she asked if she could talk for a few minutes. She comes here every year with a prayer group, “Centering Prayer’ in fact which she has been practicing for many years. She is a dear soul, filled with joy and a deep love for the Lord as well as others. She begins telling me about how her ideas of God are becoming so all-inclusive that her old comforting images are no longer helpful. “As I meditate and pray, I try to grasp some of my old images and they just disappear and I find that disappointing”. Now she knows in a general way what is going on, but still, she would like to go back to something that she knows, instead of moving forward into the ‘Dark Night’ that we are all called to, and in fact must go through in our spiritual life. It is common to fight it, but eventually, it must be experienced, this death to images about God, as well as false images about ourselves . Meditation is a form of listening to God, so it is prayer, a very deep type of prayer. When the mind is quiet, at the beginning of the journey, people often experience deep peace and consolation. This is good, for it draws them deeper into the path of seeking communion and union with God. Yet there comes a time when they are called deeper and the old images no longer work. It is not that God is becoming distant, but that God is drawing closer and becoming more intimate. Images more often than not get in the way. To wait, to sit, and to just be in the presence of Infinite Love will have a profound effect on the soul. Self-knowledge is one of the first effects on the soul; which of course takes away any kind of self-complacency. What keeps us from fully loving God and others is shown to us in images that will float up when we meditate. That is why after a time distractions can become the norm, and must be accepted and even embraced. This brings self-awareness to a deeper level; making the mediator more sensitive to anything that keeps them from allowing God’s healing love into their hearts. This for many can be a very slow process, but deepening self-knowledge is a sign that one is on the right path. Also in meditation we learn that we can’t fight what comes up, but observe, take note, and then let go of and return to being in the presence of ‘Infinite Love’. Again and again, we may have to do this. If the intention is to be in the ‘Presence’, then even if we think we have wasted our time, the opposite is true. For it is then that we are learning to seek God for God’s sake, and not for what we can get out of it. In other words, we learn to let God be God and to rest in the ‘Divine –Will’ with total trust. We learn like Peter when he got out of the boat, to look to the Lord, for when we look down at our own feet, we sink. All prayer if it is done with mindfulness is meditation. Rosaries, the reading of Scriptures, or of some other book that brings to mind our relationship with God and others is good. Not all can simply sit, some need beads and books. It does not matter, ‘grace’ works with each person in a unique way, for God each of us is his only child. It is not about being at peace, it is about moving in peace and trust when the inner and outer world is in chaos. It is about patience and mostly it is about grace and a growing understanding of the ‘Love’ that God has for each of us. Grace draws us into deeper freedom, into more profound arenas of trust that our experience of ourselves will call us to. In that we find ourselves becoming more loving and empathetic towards others. We come to understand that we are one and that what we think of others, or how we treat them is telling us something about our own inner journey and our need for ever deeper conversion towards ‘Infinite Love’. Our journey will seem to get more difficult as we go deeper, but in fact, we are only growing. As we learn to seek God in light and in the dark, we find ourselves having a deep joy that nothing can take away. No one is excluded from God’s love, or the call to go deeper. Each will do it in their own way, but it is the Same ‘Holy Spirit’ that guides us all to union with the Father of all. Those that have painful struggles with their mental state or with serious illness or perhaps the closest to God and the most faithful, for paradox is always at work….as Jesus said “The first will be last and the last first”-Br.MD
...All prayer if it is done with mindfulness is meditation. Rosaries, the reading of Scriptures, or of some other book that brings to mind our relationship with God and others is good. Not all can simply sit, some need beads and books. It does not matter, ‘grace’ works with each person in a unique way, for God each of us is his only child. I remain a baby in the prayer life, Brother Mark, often failing to move beyond connections made between particular verses in the Bible, and/or insights made by the saints, with life experiences that intersect or confirm those insights. I know that for God each of us is his only child, but to yearn for His Love simply in the silence of the present moment outside of an intellectual framework is elusive. One book that has impacted me has been a book written by Fr. Thomas Green, SJ, When the Well Runs Dry, which I first read in the 1980s. Have you heard of it?
Lately for me prayer has been intense struggle, like I'm wrestling with God and against my own raging self. My husband told me yesterday he's puzzled by why I take things so personally concerning God and it made me wonder...should I not? I don't know. But to me God is my intimate Love who both causes and relieves my pain. I'm only recently starting to understand that the times I'm crying out to Him that's He's abandoned me are the times when He's burning things away inside me...because I never am so aware of my own nothingness as when I'm feeling left alone. And a couple days later I'll have a new understanding that I'm not sure how or when I received. God does everything and I can't do anything. Somehow when I feel I've failed the most is when He chooses to give me the most. Just typing this out is making me realize why God lets me be such a mess. What an incredible Love He is.
Prayer is wrestling with God - some encounters can be devastating - after Jacob wrestled with God his hip was dislocated and he walked with a limp - he was permanently maimed - there is a deep spiritual message in that scriptures True prayer is tough - I have been so shocked recently by the revelation of the depths of my sinfulness and the sin of my life - in a sense there is a dislocation - I have shed tears of repentance and when I pray sometimes these sins flashback and the horror I feel is real and I sob my heart out - yet the Lord is so close as I need his healing and I need his love to comfort me in my distress.
Another thing I notice in prayer is that I realise that I am a much different person due to God's grace - I have changed and that is a comfort yet the sins of my past do haunt. I know that I am forgiven as I have confessed and trust in Divine Mercy -- but sometimes I am so shocked reflecting on the sins I committed without realising the profound depth of the sin at the time - it is like a revelation. The new me cannot comprehend how the 'old me' did what I did - it is like two different people - yet I am not yet the finished article but I much prefer the new me - like new wine in an old wineskin - the inner man has changed - but I still have a long way to go - Thank God I did not die before now - what a mercy - God takes us from this earth when we are most ready to go - or when we finish the mission He has given us.
Yes, I have heard of the book, read it as you did many years ago. One thing I have learned, I do not try to grade myself on how my prayer is. It is all in the intention, as you well know. peace mark
I believe that sometimes God takes a long time to answer a prayer because he wants us to make concessions to overcome sin and strengthen faith (for example, making a promise to attend Mass more and recite the Rosary as well as increase Marian devotion in general and to the other saints who help us)
