Meditation: Enriching Our Practice

by Glenn Fulop

When we gather for meditation, we open with a  reading or a personal story to enrich our practice and journey together. Below are four excerpts from recent readings. For reference, Joan Chittister refers to “oneing,” which according to the Oxford US Dictionary means “union, fusion; unity, peace.” It is also a word that was used by the Christian mystic, Lady Julian of Norwich (1342-1416), to describe the encounter between God and the soul.  In the passage by Martin Laird, “prayer word” refers to a word or short phrase that one mentally returns too when the mind wanders during the time of silent prayer or meditation. 

--Valarie Kaur, See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love (One World: 2020), 278–279, 280–281. 

The final stage of birthing labor is the most dangerous stage, and the most painful. . . . The medical term is “transition.” Transition feels like dying but it is the stage that precedes the birth of new life. After my labor, I began to think about transition as a metaphor for the most difficult fiery moments in our lives. In all our various creative labors—making a living, raising a family, building a nation—there are moments that are so painful, we want to give up. But inside searing pain and encroaching numbness, we might also find the depths of our courage, hear our deepest wisdom, and transition to the other side. . . . I decided to practice listening to the Wise Woman in me. … Here’s what I discovered about Wise Woman: Her voice is quiet. . . . I have to get really quiet in order to hear her. How do I know when I am hearing her voice? She is tender and truthful. She is not afraid of anything or anyone. She does not give me all the answers, but she does know what I need to do in this moment—to wonder, grieve, fight, rage, listen, reimagine, breathe, or push. She helps me show up to the labor as my best self.. . . . (L)istening to our deepest wisdom requires disciplined practice. … The voices we spend the most time listening to, in the world and inside our own minds, shape the way we see, how we feel, and what we do. When I spend time listening to people who are speaking from their deepest wisdom, I can feel understanding, inspiration, and energy nourish the root of my own wisdom. But I must not lose myself at the feet of others. My most vigilant spiritual practice is finding the seconds of solitude to get quiet enough to hear the Wise Woman in me.

--Joan Chittister, “A Moment for Something More Soulful Than Politics,” “Politics and Religion,” Oneing, vol. 5, no. 2 (CAC Publishing: 2017) 30, 32, 33, 34. 

As a people, we are at a crossover moment. It is a call to all of us to be our best, our least superficial, our most serious about what it means to be a Christian as well as a citizen. . . .Where in the midst of such polarization and national disunity is even the hope of oneing, of integrating the social with what we say are our spiritual selves? . . .Even the ghost of an answer makes serious spiritual demands on us all: To heal such division means that we are obliged to search out and identify our own personal value system. It requires us to admit to ourselves what it is that really drives our individual social decisions, our votes, our political alliances. Is it the need to look powerful? The desire for personal control? . .  [We must] make “Love one another as I have loved you” (see John 13:34) the foundation of national respect, the standard of our national discernment, the bedrock of both our personal relationships and a civilized society. . . .To be one, we don’t need one party, one program, one set of policies. …  What we need is one heart for the world at large, a single-minded commitment to this “more perfect union,” and one national soul, large enough to listen to one another for the sake of the planet—for the sake of us all. So where can we look for oneing in the political arena? Only within the confines of our own hearts. Politics—government—does not exist for itself. . . .In the end, politics is nothing more than an instrument of social good and human development. It is meant to be the right arm of those whose souls have melted into God.

-- Martin Laird, O.S.A., A Sunlit Absence, (Oxford University Press, 2011) 17, 18

In early seasons of practice there is typically very little sense of our abiding immersion in Silence. Instead, when we try to be silent we find that there is anything but silence. This inner noise is generated by a deeply ingrained tendency, reinforced over a lifetime, to derive our sense of who we are and what our life is about from these thoughts and feelings. We look within and genuinely think that we are our thoughts and feelings. […] No matter what our experience, the practice remains the same: gently direct the attention back to the prayer word united with the breath. The basic skill that we learn at this doorway of practice is to return to the prayer word instead of getting caught up in reactive inner commentary on the distractions. […] The ability to meet with stillness all that appears and disappears in awareness will gradually (very gradually) replace the deeply ingrained pattern of meeting experiences with reactive commentary. […] With regular practice and according to timing beyond our control, our practice will begin to change. As our practice deepens, thoughts and feelings continue to come and go, but our relationship with them changes.

--Danusha Lameris, from Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection (Green Writers Press, 2019)

Small Kindnesses

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”

St. Stephen’s Meditation Group meets every Monday and Thursday at 4 pm via Zoom (find the link in the Thursday email).

All are welcome; no meditation experience is necessary.