The River and the Bridge VII

On the journey into Love’s experience we can reach moments where our experience of Love begins to challenge the influence we allow fear to have over us. In these moments our experience of Love moves against the grain of fear and the limitations that fear can impose. We grow restless, we feel anger, resentment, longing. Finally we come to enough is enough. In this dynamic Love and Love’s experience stand with us as we slowly turn against the patterns that fear has worn into our minds and hearts. In these moments of grace we allow grace to support and transform our minds and hearts. In time and with enough of these moments, we can grow in Love, and we can find ourselves acting with Love even for fear itself. We come to discover and name the ways through which fear has attempted protection and dominion over us. It may be that we have to keep re-visiting these moments of tension between fear and Love until fear melts enough. Each time we do we move a little more from fear’s influence while moving gracefully into Love’s embrace. In this Love our humanity is let loose to experience the communion between our being and God. In this union of Love our being shines and the world notices. We live more deeply with Love for the world.

The River and the Bridge VII

Fear tries to tell me that here on the bridge I am safe,

far above the unpredictability of life and love.

‘What if you can’t handle a life of love?’

‘What if God asks you to do something you don’t want to do?’

‘What if you don’t want what you think you want?’

Fear is the hall of mirrors man,

the one who would have me in the safety of confusion.

-

Again frustration and anger rise within me.

I have at last had enough of fearful rendezvous.

I snap.

‘What do you want from me’ I yell at fear.

‘Nothing seems good enough for you.

How dare you come between me and the River, between me and Love!

I will love my deepest desires, they are loved by God.

I will be happy in the living of them!’

-

‘Don’t go down there,’ (he points to the valley below).

It’s a big scary world and you’re not good enough for it.’

I turn to him seething.

‘Stop coming between me and life!

Stop bringing me here!’

-

I stop.

Fear falls silent.

I feel compassion for him.

-

‘Look we both know how hard at times my life has been.

You were at my side when it seemed that no-one else was.

You looked after me the best way you could – by getting me to fear everyone and everything.

Thank you for all you have done and for all you will try to do.

But you must understand that you do not speak the truth to me with Love.

Yes there are times when you do speak truth,

that is why I listen.

But you do it only with fear because that is who you are.

There has been no compassion in you,

no Love when you speak.

-

Too many times you speak to me only from this bridge.

This is where we have lived apart from Love and apart from my heart.

Or at least we did.

For I have gone to the River with you,

I have faced you with Love.

You were not able to stop me from experiencing Love more deeply.

I know now that there is nothing to fear from Love.

You will not stop me from flowing with the River.’

-

I turn from fear and walk away.

The River and the Bridge VI

Sometimes we can over think things. Sometimes the best thing to do is to just let something be, to simply experience something without searching for some deeper meaning or intent. Perhaps a meaning will reveal itself only later as life is lived.

Sometimes a mind caught up in creating meaning and purpose by itself can miss the deeper meaning and purpose within an experience. This something deeper has a life and timing all its own. A life lived with spirit is about learning and living into this deeper life and timing. Sometimes a pre-emptive curiosity, a prideful ego, anxiousness or fear can all stop the head and the heart from working together.

Spiritual life and timing is about the head and heart working together. It is part of the graced journey towards wholeness, towards integration.

VI

In the day that follows, the experience of Love at the river begins to engage my curious mind.

‘What does it mean?’

‘What will happen now?’

‘Did that really happen?’

Curious consciousness seeks to know.

With mind seeking its own answers

I slowly begin to wonder apart from Love.

I lose touch with the valley and my heart.

-

Mind falls from the present moment.

Unanswerable wonderings move beyond the light of grace.

They become ‘I don’t know’.

‘I don’t know’ feeds doubt.

This doubt, now apart from Love, feeds fear.

I withdraw again with fear to the bridge of rational mind

To analyse new uncertainty at a ‘safe’ distance.

Impasse

Life is approaching impasse.

Impasse. What is impasse?

A position from which there is no escape.

.

What is happening?

Mind has made a play for too many things.

Too much living as if mind was God.

.

Impasse approaches.

I am learning now to let it come.

Is mind too tired for any more ego-centric creations?

.

Weariness has become blessing.

Grace is here in its own light.

A silent and weary mind cannot move much into darkness.

.

Mind, are you now too tired to carry attention away?

Are you at last humble enough?

Maranatha, you are becoming enough.

.

So abandon to Love’s movement.

Let grace peel your fingers from the grip.

Let go, be in forgiveness.

.

Love is becoming human.

Christ is budding in the mind.

Being is where I have always been.

A Man of White

Hanging from a tree among the trees – a man of white.

Such blue surrounds us.

Leaves gently move on a soft breeze.

.

I look to him.

Hard, dirty suffering – when will it end?

Comfort comes, comfort of a human solidarity now divine.

.

You draw my attention inwards to you.

Gently and wonderfully I feel isolation become compassion within.

You make the death of suffering a new life thing.

.

A Crow lands, bearing witness to change.

Black is mind accepting its place.

Black is the light of your presence.

.

This man of white hangs before me.

My master, my brother, my friend.

He asks that compassion become an energy of loving embrace.

.

He is love in my deepest place.

That ‘no-place’ that intellect tries to claim

But does not understand.

.

The white man, hanging, claims this ‘no-place’

Gives it freely to me.

It was there all along.

.

Live from that hidden place

Where the white man hangs no more.

Let his compassion be yours.

The River and the Bridge V

The inner movement from head to the heart often requires an outer journey. For many fear can keep us in our heads, while the God of our hearts invites a journey downwards. This journey can take our whole lives. On this journey we are drawn, more fully and deeply, into our hearts – the place of connection, relationship and longing. On this journey to our hearts we can encounter Love and experience something of Love’s divine character. We discover that Divine Love is the profoundest Love.

On this journey of our consciousness into Love, God respects our freedom. God never forces. As awareness journeys downwards deeper into our hearts, we experience a God of gentleness, tenderness, and infinite patience. This Love respectfully and faithfully heals us into a clearing vision and true experience of who we really are.

Love wants to move within us, unrestrained by fear, to sweep us ever deeper into the Love life of God. It is us who limit God and all that God would want to do. All we need do is ask Love ever more fully into our lives – into our hearts and into our conscious minds. As this happens we come to truly understand that fear is not divine.

God would have us experience the liberty that is the absence of fear, a liberty in which we are re-introduced again and again to our own hearts. Love knows our hearts and would never act in ways contrary to them. God keeps our hearts safe. We reveal God as Love when living out of the liberty of a human life that is being love-filled and growing in fearlessness.

V

And so I walk again and I curse You!

‘Who are You, what do You want of me?’

‘I thought I knew what I wanted. Answer me!’

Tears of anger and longing flow,

Enough to ease the tension in me.

The walk is now prayer.

Awareness moves downwards.

-

I come again to the valley with the river below.

Now the rocky edge is too far from the river.

The River within seeks the river without.

I know deep down what needs to be done.

Will I be faithful?

-

Through the cool of the Eye of the Needle I descend,

In search of the river, in search of my heart.

At the bottom of a gully I come to an expansive cave

Formed by water and wind, water long gone on its way down.

Is this close enough to Love?

I see what the water has done,

Worn down the rockface, propelled trees and boulders in its wake.

Sometimes Love can be unrestrained,

It can show its strength,

It can leave its mark.

The water has shown the way down

And feeling the River’s pull anew,

I now see a new path to descend.

-

As I begin again a new resolve claims me:

‘If it’s what I really want to do, I’ll do it!’

I feel the force of this resolve, it is real

And I embrace it.

-

Prayers form my descent:

‘I am a man of courage! Help me not to run from myself, from You.’

‘Help me to see what I really want.’

‘Please uncover what might be hidden.’

‘If I really want it, I promise I will do it!’

The going down takes its physical toll,

And all the while I feel the River’s draw.

On and on I push engaged in a Holy Quest,

A task of faithful endurance,

Of faithfulness to Love and to myself.

-

I see it emerge from behind the trees: the river.

I come to its bank.

It is smooth, engaging, graceful.

Light reflects on its surface.

I feel the movement of the River within me.

I lay on its bank, far from the bridge, and I wait,

Too exhausted to think.

-

Time passes.

I feel like a kid again.

Down the river people jump from Tower Rock and into the water.

Playfully I entertain the same idea.

I feel like a kid again.

‘I would’ve done it you know’ I say.

‘I would’ve done it if I really, really wanted to.’

Love knows and Love revels in my faithfulness.

Peace and joy flow from the gut.

What is Christian Meditation?

What is Christian meditation? Why do we meditate? How do we meditate?

The practice of meditation has an important place in many of the world’s spiritual traditions. Generally speaking the practice of meditation is about the focusing, the disciplining of our minds attention. Here the word mind is not just about the brain. Mind, in the meditative context, is a more inclusive term. It includes thought, and also emotion, imagination, all the senses. The mind in meditation also includes our body – our sense of it, how we live in and with it. From the Christian perspective, mind in meditation is an incarnational experience, a whole body experience, not just a cranial one.

Our minds tend towards stimulation. And in today’s world there is a lot of stimulus out there for us. Each day, in our work, our relationships, our recreation, indeed in the general living of an active life, there is much that requires our attention and much that can take our attention. This world of stimulus and activity can leave us over stimulated and can easily distract our attention away from other aspects of a human and spiritual life, aspects that may not be as obvious or as immediately demanding.

A commitment to the practice of meditation can still the mind, allowing it to come to a point of more or less rest. This is very important for the health of the human mind and the human body. The bodies systems can rest. Blood pressure lowers. We come to experience a natural stillness that perhaps we had forgotten about and in fact needed. And it is in this stillness that the Christian Meditator comes to experience, in the heart of their own unique human identity, something of the presence and action of God.

To facilitate this coming to stillness in mind and body that is so necessary in the experience of meditation, the mind needs a focus. The diffuseness of attention that our culture encourages through its constant stimulation needs to be met and countered. How is this done?

Firstly, all approaches to meditation ask that the body be still and positioned in such a way as to keep both body and mind relaxed and alert. Zen Buddhism advocates the lotus position, for example. Christian meditation simply asks that the meditator be positioned so that the back remains straight. This can be done seated, cross-legged on a prayer mat, or from a supported kneeling position. If the meditator is seated, it is recommended that their feet be flat on the floor. It is important that, during the time of meditation, there is a commitment to maintaining a stillness of body. It is recommended that the meditator close their eyes.

Secondly, an inner focusing technique is employed. Some spiritual traditions ask that the meditator focus on their breathing, while breathing from their stomach. Other traditions ask that the meditator use a prayer word or mantra. The Christian meditator employs a mantra. This is a single word repeated interiorly. Ideally, the home of the mantra as it is recited is in the chest or lower abdomen. Over time the Christian meditator ceases to say the mantra, instead coming to listen to it as it sounds with their breathing and from the heart. The word that we, as Christian meditators, are recommended to use is the single Aramaic word maranatha. This word has deep Christian scriptural roots and is of the language that Jesus spoke. In English it means ‘come Lord’. We separate the word into its four syllables and sound it gently and consistently for the entire length of our meditation: ma-ra-na-tha. It is God’s word of transforming grace for us.

The word was suggested for the Christian meditator by the Benedictine monk John Main. It is in Aramaic so as not to be a source of distraction for the mind coming to stillness. John re-discovered for us this way of Christian meditation within the monastic tradition, a way that had been largely forgotten. He embraced its practice and enthusiastically championed its use and relevance for all Christians. Its roots go back deep into Christian history, as far back as the third century to the Desert Fathers and Mothers. Today, Christian meditators can be found throughout the world, members of a movement called the World Community for Christian Meditation.

So all that the Christian meditator needs to do in order to meditate is to practice the stilling of the body through sustained position, and the stilling of the mind through the use of a mantra. It is recommended that the Christian meditator meditate morning and evening each day for a minimum of 20 minutes. 30 minutes is best.

In these two aspects of practice we see the simplicity of meditation. Simplicity is important because our minds, if left to themselves, can complicate matters. The simplicity of meditation can highlight just how distracted our minds can be. Time and time again, during the practice of meditation, our minds can wander from the mantra. That is why, to experience the fruits of Christian meditation, we must remain committed, listening to the sounding of our mantra for the whole of our meditation period, gently returning our attention to the mantra time and time again. As we do this, growing in gentle fidelity to our morning and evening practice, seeds of patience and compassion grow into good fruit and perseverance flowers. Stillness takes subtle root in our psyches.

What else can happen as we grow in the stillness that meditation provides? We may begin to notice that the outer distractions and stimulus that once caught our attention now begin to lose their appeal. Perhaps the TV starts to become annoying. Gossip magazines lose their luster. The car radio is turned off. We start to want to be still. We begin to intuit the importance of stillness for us. And as we grow in the experience of this stillness, we begin to notice the silence that lives in the stillness. This is certainly what has happened to me.

As time has gone on, and as my meditation practice has deepened I have discovered that silence is not to be feared. Silence is the natural home of my spirit. Meditation is a way into the experience of silence. And silence is the language of God. Silence is the texture of Divine Love. There is such a deep well of silence in each of us. In the stillness of meditation we can swim in this well. And sometimes, in such times of divine embrace, we can experience the gifts of an inner peace and joy – gifts that come from the life of Christ within us.

My experience of meditation has also taught me that in meditation we are always starting again. A lot of the time I am distracted by the compulsion of my mind towards over- thinking. I have come to realise that in the times when I am still enough to enter the silence, it is in those times that God acts within me to make it so.

In Christian meditation progress is not linear. If there is any progress at all, then it is one of faithfulness, faithfulness to what Christ is doing. Sometimes it feels like nothing is happening, or even that the mind seems worse and the heart is far away. It is during these times that humility has a chance to grow in us as we experience our own inner poverty. At these times too perseverance can take root.

Christian spirituality teaches us that as we grow in allowing God into our hearts, minds, and lives, so too we grow in being loving and loveable people. It is often in the experience of our own human weakness and limitation that we discover, over time, a divine invitation to let go a little more and allow the life of God to love us a little more. This has been my experience in the practice of Christian meditation. I need God if I am to meditate. And as I meditate, as I somehow allow, God acts ever more deeply in the hidden places of my psyche. As this happens healing happens, transformation and integration occurs, and I grow in the freedom of Christ. I experience the life of Jesus within me and his friendship.

Christian Meditator and Activist to Open Our Minds and Hearts Once Again

Donna Mulhearn, a fellow Christian Meditator, and a pilgrim in search of justice, has just announced her latest adventure. On March 13 Donna and her partner Martin will be leaving for Afghanistan to, in her words ‘take part in a delegation hosted by a wonderful group of Afghan students.’ This group call themselves the Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers (http://ourjourneytosmile.com/blog/). Donna has a commitment to non-violent protest, as does this group. Donna wrote recently on her own blog (http://pilgriminkabul.wordpress.com/), that these Afghan students  ‘are exploring nonviolent, non-military solutions to the situation there, in the spirit of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.’

Donna and Martin will participate in the launching of a campaign of non-violent protest on March 21 in the Afghan city of Kabul. The launch will consist of a candlelight vigil, procession, and tree planting ceremony. The Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers have their own website:  http://www.livewithoutwars.org/

Donna came to prominence some years ago as a participant in the human shield program in Iraq during the second Iraq war. She and a group of other volunteers used their own presence at important Iraqi community infrastructure and other utilities as a way of protecting these places from being destroyed by allied bombing. Their actions were also a protest against the war itself. More of Donna’s story can be read in her book ‘Ordinary Courage.’

Please have a look at Donna’s blog. If you want to, please subscribe. Her first blog post outlines what she is doing, as well as ways to help. I see Donna as someone with a heart that is big, a heart that compels her to action. Her life of active compassion is a model to us all, a life that often makes me suitably uncomfortable.

The River and the Bridge IV

We are made for love – to be in it and expressing it. And so we are made for God – to be in God and expressing God. For this to happen God is always inviting us to know God. Indeed we are invited by God to be growing in conscious union with God. For the Christian this means becoming one with Jesus Christ.  This growing in union with Christ is at the heart of Christian spirituality. As this happens we find ourselves giving our hearts, our minds, our lives more and more to the Divine. In this is our greatest happiness. In this we discover how we can love, who we can be.

The movement to union, however, is a movement of trust. Many of us feel great tension and perhaps confusion when a longing for God and life is being experienced concurrently with a fear of what this God and life could do with us. Because of this tension the movement towards union with Christ can at times be filled with uncertainty, fear and anxiousness. We move back and forth between experiences of fear and experiences of Love. This is an understandable dynamic in the dance of human deification. God wants us with God. We struggle and resist. We long for God and are afraid. But God knows our heart and never forces. When we trust enough to say yes, having been worn out enough by our own struggle, something happens: God can show us the desires of our heart and offers saving help so that we may live into them. As we accept God’s saving help, we can grow in relationship and union with the Divine. In this way the living into our heart’s desires also becomes a living into God. And in time we may discover that the desire for God and the desire to know our heart are the same desire. Why is this? It is because the deepest desires of our heart are for a love that only God can provide. God offers this love simply by being God’s self: Love. An opening heart cannot resist the Love it was made for.

The Divine is the profoundest Love – gentle, tender, respectful, ultimate, and faithful. Fear is not divine. In the end there is nothing to fear.

IV

But surly there is logic in discerning life from a distance?

The bridge oversees all and is safe enough,

Away from the river’s murky depths.

And yet –

Is it the place from which to truly live?

Is being safe enough, enough?

What is the greater risk: distance from life or depth in life?

Where does my heart call me?

It calls me to the river below, to the River within.

Fear rises again,

Like the great concrete legs

That rise from the earth keeping the bridge far from the valley.

Fear takes me away, as it often does,

Away to the ‘safety’ of this distance.

And in the safety of the rational only,

Far away from my relational heart,

I stand on the bridge.

But how I hunger for the depths of the River,

To lose fearful awareness at the bottom of You.

To fall past Your shimmering,

And into Love.

I feel my deep longing for You.

And I fear what Love may have for me.

I fear what Love may uncover in my heart,

How life could change when lived with Love.

The experience of fear and the longing for Love

Create anxious tension in me as old as the human walk itself.

What will I lose if I embrace my heart?

Frustration builds and anger flares,

Energies that must be expressed,

Or I will lose myself to blackness.

The River and the Bridge III

If God is real and God is Love, then God lives in us as Love. In our deepest places, we long for this Love. Divine Love is stronger than fear. If we dare allow ourselves to be open to this Love it can stir a longing and restlessness that fear cannot satisfy. Fear can stop us from opening our hearts and minds, from even knowing how to open. It can contribute to a lack of trust and believe in God, ourselves, others, life itself. If God is real and God is Love, well what will this Love ask of us?

III

From grey to green, to yellow, to silver, to gold,

The river’s reflection is a welcome, an invitation to its depths.

Through its being it announces a more humble way:

Lose your willfulness,

Let Love flow gently into the cracks and crevices of your heart.

Oh River of Love what will you ask of me?

What will it cost me to flow more deeply in Your ways?

I am afraid.

What will Love ask of me?

The River and the Bridge II

Here is the second part of The River and the Bridge. This section introduces us to a nearby bridge. This bridge stands in contrast to the valley that it rises above. The bridge is quite substantial – it carries a major motorway known as the M5. While the river and its valley are about being and living with God, the bridge (standing so far above and distant) is about the times when we attempt to live without including Divine Love in our conscious lives. When we do this it could  mean ego is for some reason afraid. When I am in this pattern of fearful distance I can often become overly rational, thinking too much about questions best answered in the actual living of a human with God.

II

Bellbirds vie with car tyres.

Straight across, up and down, and in the distance,

Stands the bridge.

With legs hewn deep into the earth

It spans this valley of vulnerable embrace,

Majestic lines sailing above a living reach.

The bridge is a creation of rational strength,

Strong enough it seems to out-will the strongest wind,

Dug deep enough to out-manoeuvre the river itself.

It stands apart from the embrace below.

Sometimes I stand apart from the embrace below.

Fearing the risk I think vulnerability contains,

I prefer a straight driving course,

An outward appearance of strength.