January 2010 |
Dear Friends: I have always been a multi-tasker. I can juggle a whole lot of things at one time and only occasionally drop something. So, a few years ago, while in the middle of a very busy and often stressful life, I decided to add meditation, I figured it would be one more thing I could handle. I would meditate on Bible passages and spiritual life while I was driving to and from work, while I prepared dinner, and after the kids were tucked in bed. But it didn't work. I just couldn't fit it in there were no spaces for quietly focusing on God and his word other than my reading and prayer time in the morning. Frustration! It is not good to be frustrated with meditation. It is supposed to be a calming, centering kind of activity. Instead, I felt like a failure. This was too hard. That is, until I figured out how to snorkel (more on that in a minute). An insight came when I read the account of Mary Magdalene and Jesus outside the tomb on resurrection morning. Mary reached for Jesus when she realized who he was, but he would not allow her to touch him. He said,
I really identified with Mary's desire to cling to Jesus. She wanted so much to be in his presence, to never let him go. But it seemed to me that Jesus was saying we have to do just one thing at a time. He told her to leave him because he had a job for her to do. She could either cling or serve, but she could not do both at the same time. Maybe I was expecting too much of myself. I wanted consciously to live in God's presence all the time. But if I paralleled my life with what Jesus told Mary, maybe just morning devotions and Sunday church would be enough. Yes, I would sit at his feet, but then I would leave and go out to do the work in front of me. No more spiritual multi-tasking! But, as I meditated on that thought (really, I did!), I realized that I am not living under the same circumstances as Mary was. I now have the Holy Spirit living inside me and, because of his presence and his power in my life, there must be a way to cling and serve at the same time. Besides Paul says we should pray without ceasing. Praying all the time has to be a form of meditation. Cling and serve. We are much more fortunate than Mary was in that we never have to leave Jesus, but, with that realization, I found myself back to multi tasking! Though discouraged, I wasn't ready to give up. I wanted, more than almost anything else, to learn to focus on God, to cling to Jesus, to live in the Holy Presence every moment of every day. Then I found and combined two really good quotes and decided that they would be my inspiration (sorry, I can't remember who said these wise things or I would tell you who they came from):
But it was snorkeling that helped me to understand what that really meant and how to prepare the way for this two-level living that would allow me to cling to Jesus even while I was doing something else. First, you have to know that coordination is not my forte. I have to carefully instruct my body in what to do and then follow through one step at a time. So I took an on-the-beach snorkeling instruction session and determined to follow the rules exactly. I put on the mask after defogging it, secured the strap and turned to my snorkeling tube, breathing as they told me to. Finally ready for action, I swam out to the reef and gingerly put my face in the water, observing some pretty incredible fish. Then I bravely went under, concentrating on every breath as I looked at the under-the-surface world around me. There was a mistake once in awhile in my breathing when I forgot to pay attention, but after awhile, I got into the rhythm of breathing, going a little deeper as I held my breath, then surfacing, getting rid of water in the tube, and going back to tube breathing. Over time I paid less and less attention to my breathing and more and more attention to the underwater life around me, but, without much effort, I was successfully doing both at the same time . And that was exactly what I needed to learn to do when it came to living the meditative life I dreamed of. I needed to practice meditation as a new way of breathing:
Just as breathing under water was not automatic for me, so learning to live on physical and spiritual levels at the same time would take some practice. But the realization that was so life-changing for me was that meditating simultaneously with living life is not multi-tasking any more than walking and breathing at the same time is multi-tasking! It is just a new skill we learn living life on two levels at the same time. It takes some instruction (I read books from some of the old saints who understood the concept Brother Lawrence was my favorite, but also Thomas Merton, Theresa of Avila, and some more current authors such as John Eldredge and Thomas Kelly), and some practice. But with the constant encouragement of the Holy Spirit, saturation with the word of God, and learning to pray about everything, meditation happens just like breathing. I found that I can live consciously in God's presence every moment of every day (though I confess I am a long ways from doing it perfectly still practicing) and still go about the tasks that face me hour by hour. The result?
If you haven't already, I would challenge you to try two-level living. Not multi-tasking, but a new way of breathing. It's pretty easy once you get into the rhythm of it. And the views in that under-the-surface level are breathtaking! I would love to hear how your breathing exercises are going as we begin a new year of walking every day and every moment with Jesus. If you want to let me know of your own experience with meditation, go to the Contact Beverly button on my home page and write me a note. Blessings in 2010! Bev *Emilie Griffin in Clinging , pp. 84 and 98
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