Preparing for meditation
Find a place to sit comfortably. Mobile phone on silent.
Take your time. Breathe in and out a few times, slowing down …
Don't try too hard. Relax. Be open.
Prayer isn't telling what God should be doing but becoming aware of what God is already doing.
"The best prayer is to rest in the goodness of God and to let that goodness reach right down to your lowest place of need." (Julian of Norwich)
When you seem ready, begin.
You don't have to finish the exercise now, or today.
If and when something arrests your attention, stay there. Savour the words. Let them speak to you.
That may be enough for the next few minutes.
Reclaim your Sacred Site
Clear a little space
In your crowded everyday
And every day reclaim the Sacred Site
There at the heart of you.
Give the Sacred the space and time
To come and sit with you
To become intimate with your story.
Noel Davis
Stop searching, stop travelling, and you will arrive. There is nowhere to go! Be still and see what is before your eyes. The faster you travel and the more effort you invest in travelling, the more likely you are to go astray. People ask WHERE they will find God. The answer is HERE. When they will find Him. The answer is NOW. How they will find Him. The answer is BE SILENT and LOOK.
Anthony de Mello
DADIRRI recognizes the deep spring that is within us. We call on it and it calls on us. This is the gift that Australia is thirsting for. It is something like what you call “contemplation”. Our Aboriginal culture has taught us to be still and wait. We do not try to hurry things up. We wait for the right time…..We don’t mind waiting because we want things to be done with care.
Miriam-Rose Ungenmerr-Baumann
Days pass when I forget the mystery.
Problems insoluble and problems offering
their own ignored solutions
jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber
along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing
their coloured clothes; caps and bells.
And then
once more the quiet mystery
is present to me, the throng’s clamour
recedes: the mystery
that there is anything, anything at all,
let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything
rather than void: and that, O Lord,
Creator, Hallowed One, You still,
hour by hour sustain it.
Denise Levertov
Think about the invitation to move from living
NO-WHERE TO NOW-HERE
Often we live no-where, trapped in the past (what is it you worry about? What does your mind return to again and again?) or caught up in the future (what do you dream about? What do you spend time on anticipating?)
People in the Bible- when faced with mystery-exclaimed, “Here I am”. (Moses before the burning bush, Mary before the Archangel Gabriel). Find a quiet spot- notice how often you are tempted to move away- and gently repeat to yourself- before God- “Here I am”.
In English “present” means both “gift” and “now”. Learning to live in the present is learning to live giftedly- graciously- gratefully. What would it be like to live your life as a gift- as something given?
God is a cherishing presence that sets us free
Edward Schillebeeckx
Surely the Lord is in this place and I never knew it
Genesis 28:16
